Part 1 - Formal game proposal

1. Game Description

Working Title: Office Onslaught
Fight the Giant Faceless Corporation and its mindless drone workers
Utilize every office tool available

Working Logo:

Setting and Story

While having a drink at the company's water-cooler (100% natural baby-seal tears) Steve looked around: Workers being enslaved in cubicles, having their souls sucked from their living bodies. Somewhere, a lawyer is heard laughing maniacally. The coffee-machine, powered by the souls of retired employees, cackles at the workers just trying to get through the day.

Suddenly Steve realized: This company is just pure evil and someone has to do something about it. But how can a lowly worker like him do anything against this huge faceless corporation?

Steve will just have to do it one evil lackey at a time.

Diviner Corp.

Game Principles

Game Principles Office Mayhem – Players will be introduced to the types of office mayhem that haven’t been seen since the days of Dilbert and Office Space. All of the games stages will take place in rooms designed after those that might be found in a typical office. The basic stage will consist of a maze of cubicles, with enemy spawn points at the outer edges. Future stages may include a warehouse or the break room.

Bloodthirsty Enemies – Players are pitted against a relentless horde of enemies. As in the game Nazi Zombies, there is no win condition, only a fruitless effort for survivors. This sort of extremely frustrating gameplay has actually attracted gamers since the earliest days of electronic gaming. Think of Tetris: no win condition, only a maddening onslaught of blocks. As the rounds of survival go on, the number of enemies, and their intelligence increases. Enemies will come out of the walls and into the office environment.

Basic Level Design:

Cooperative Gameplay – Up to four players are to work together to make as long a run at survival as possible. Enemies will be significantly weaker and or more stupid the fewer players there are. However, if you start with 4 players and one dies, the enemies do not get weaker. There is also no respawning throughout the game, once a player dies, he/she is finished for the entirety of the game.

Many Creative Weapons and Types of Armor – Players will use seemingly ordinary office supplies to fend off their enemies. Such weapons include staplers, water coolers, post-it notes, and most importantly, the mice and keyboards of fallen enemies will be used against future members of the horde. Between rounds when the monsters are preparing to mount their next attack, players will be able to combine different office objects in order to make more powerful weapons. For example, a player could combine two mice to make a mouse bola, or take an array of optical mice to make a lazer.

Weapons:

Player Statistics:

Enemies of all Shapes and Sizes – Office electronics that have joined the rebellion include computers (monitor and horizontal box), coffee machines, fax machines, server racks, and vending machines, just to name a few. Super-intelligent server racks and their incredibly brutish and stupid vending machine cousins will be the largest and most powerful enemies, while fax machines and coffee machines are the mindless drones, and computers are the mid-level, semi-intelligent field marshals. The monitors of fallen computers may be collected as trophies, while their keyboards and mice may be harvested and used in future weapons. The “blood” of coffee makers and contents of vanquished vending machines can be consumed in order to regain health.

Computer Trophy:

Computer:

Printer:

Server Rack:

You Never Know What Will Happen Next – Throughout the game, interesting instances will come up. Players will all have to perform some action to either receive some sort of reward, or harm the robots in some way. For example, all players may be given the time to set of fire sprinklers at a specific time in order to cut down many enemies with one blast of water from the sky.

Random Ideas and Very High Targets

-*Vehicles* – if we implement a warehouse level, it would be fun to be able to drive around a forklift to fight the horde. -*Swarms of Anarchist Protesters* – Take advantage of those who only want to fight the man by summoning your own horde of brainwashed anarchists.

Enemies

Enemies for desirable target:

Server-Rack: Big, very strong, attacks with tentacle-like cable arms
Printer: Shoots paper
Fax-Machine: Players too close to it get so annoyed they only attack the fax-machine
Terminal-Computer: Small, moves on spider-legs, low health
Lawyer: Soulless creature from the darkest depths of the corporate dimension, right hand of the giant faceless corporation

Level Obstacles

Obstacles for desired target:

Static (just to restrict movement, give cover):

Cubicles
Office plants
White-board
Bin

Dynamic (other effects):

Water-cooler: When shot it will explode and destroy electronic units
Pneumatic tube: Shoots out tube-mail from time to time

Weapons

Weapons for desired target:

Keyboard: Melee range, high damage, slow swing
Mouse-Flail: High melee range, medium damage, fast swing
Dual Stapler-Gun: Medium range, shoots a lot of staples, low damage
Fire-Extinguisher: High range, works like a flamethrower, slows enemies, low damage (high damage to electronic enemies)
Refridgerator-Magnet: Disables electronic enemies, medium range

Weapons for high target:

Telephone: Used like Bolas, medium range, disables movement

Technical Details

Controls:

Player Heading: The player may face in any direction along a planar field. The direction in which a player faces determines which direction his attacks are directed.
Player Movement: The player may move forwards, backwards, left and right (strafing).
Triggers: Primary attacks and secondary attacks are controlled with triggers.
Buttons: Buttons will be used mostly in the upgrade weapons screen between rounds

Animations:

Player Animation: A model of human animation must be found in order to realistically display player motion. Developing our own engine for this would result in an unrealistic, and unsatisfying motion simulation.
Enemy Animation: Enemy animation will be easier. Servers will simply wheel around to move, while all other enemies (excluding the possibility of including lawyers as enemies), will simply rock back and forth to move along the ground. Still, some sort of engine will probably need to be found to simulate this type of motion.
Weapon Animation: Each type of weapon will require a different type of player animation. Throwing an object, swinging an object, and firing an object will all need to be distinct motions. Not only will the player have to make these motions, but the weapons themselves will need animating. We will most likely provide motion blurs for the melee weapons, and some sort of path-tracing animation for ranged attacks.

Interactions:

Player-world: Players run on top of a plane.
Player-obstacle: Players should not be able to run through objects.
Player-player: Players WILL be able to run through one another.
Player-enemy: Players should not be able to run through enemies.
Engine has been found for this

Damaging Others:

Player-player: Players will not incur damage from friendly fire
Player-obstacle: Obstacles will stop, but not take damage from ranged attacks
Player-enemy: Enemies will accumulate damage from attacks

Sounds:

Sound effects and a soundtrack will need to be found.

Tools

2. "Big Idea" Bullseye

Face-Melting Office Insanity
What will happen next?

3. Development Schedule

Layers

Functional Minimum

Simple level without any obstacles
Players can move, use their weapons
Only one type of enemy constantly spawns and attacks (no waves)
Only one weapon, no upgrades
Enemies have only simple ai

Low Target

Multiple types of enemies
Level with obstacles(cubicle, watercooler, etc)
Enemies appear in bigger and bigger waves
Random events
Simple sound effects, background music
More advanced horde-ai

Desirable Target

Advanced enemies with special abilities
Players can upgrade their weapons
Fancy graphical effects for shooting, explosions, enemy-attacks
Fancy sound effects (created by us)

High Target

Boss-Fights (Boss-AI)
Multiple Levels (Different scenes from the office)
Different Characters to choose from (maybe with different stats, properties)
Cool physical effects for objects
Equip different office-supplies as armor

Extras

Different game-modes: CTF, Deathmatch, Sudden Death,
Multiple levels with continuous story

Timeline

timeline.pdf: timeline.pdf

4. Assessment

The main strength of our game will be its addictiveness and relatively simple game play. It will satisfy the base human desire to defeat great hordes of enemies. I think that males from age 12 to 25 will be most interested in this game. Our world will be a dark, and hopeless one in which humans must struggle greatly for survival. I would say that this game is a success if it reaches anything close to the addictiveness of the games Tetris or Nazi Zombies, especially the latter, which I have played for countless hours and never grown tired of. One major aspect of making this sort of game very addictive is balancing the frustration of game play well. If game play isn't somewhat frustrating, then no one will be driven to continue playing, while if it is too frustrating, many television screens will have new, XBox controller-shaped holes in them.

5. Idea Bin

All unused ideas:

coop gameplay
Defend together against hordes of enemies
Each round more and more enemies appear
Use all kinds of office-tools: Keyboard, mouse, stapler, watercooler, post-it notes
After each round: upgrade your equipment(ie combine keyboard and mouse to get a flail, unleash the laser-mouse)
Boss-Stages include single enemies (middle-management, corporation overlord, etc) that are harder to defeat
Random events keep happening throughout the fights:
- Rageguy running in and raging at everyone
- Birthday-party at the office
- Watercoolers exploding
- Pneumatic tube shooting
- Huge clippy appears covering the whole screen, annoying everyone
Enemies drop powerups, healthpacks

Random Ideas:

Forklifts (maybe in a different level)
Anti-Capitalism protesters
Duct-tape & WD40

Other ideas:

Worker Drones
Desktop-Computer
Server-Rack
Supercomputer-Overmind
Printer with paper-jam
fax-machine
Insane secretary
Big Boss
Board of Directors
Angry mob of shareholders
Computer-Support person
Office-Supplies salesman (maybe gets safed as random event and after that upgrades the weapons of the players)

All ideas:

Cubicles
Water-cooler
Pneumatic Tube
Fire extinguisher
Office plant (Carnivorous plant?)