Assignment 2 - Dimension

For Team VectorForce's project, I will be talking about the Physical dimension of our game (which is still untitled).

The game is a sort of puzzle platformer, so the game world exists in 2 dimensions: vertical and horizontal. The player's avatar can walk horizontally. A gravitational force holds the avatar down against the floor, but the player can use the "velocity gun" to launch themselves upwards, to further propel themselves left and right, or move back downward more quickly.

The physical layout of the game world starts from the level select area. This area serves as the central hub from which the player explores other levels. Each door leads to another area. As the theme of the game revolves around the Internet being blocked and censored, initially only one level is accessible to the player, but as they succeed in clearing each level (decrypting and freeing information at the end), more areas of the Internet become accessible to them from the level select area. Generally, clearing one level will unlock the next level in sequence, and having all of the normal levels unlocked will unlock the final stage.

(This is a general layout of how the levels might be shaped and how they will connect with the level select area. The sketches are not to-scale, and the exact level layouts and number of levels may vary in the final version of the game)

The player proceeds through each 2-D level, starting at one end and making their way through obstacles to reach the other end, where they unlock the next level and are brought back to the level select area. Levels are mostly arranged vertically at first, making the player ascend towards their goal, but there will be sections where the player moves left-to-right (or vice-versa), or falls downward and must dodge various traps and obstacles on their way. Despite these changes, there will always be a clear linear direction: the player must move away from the starting point, avoid any traps or dead ends, and continue toward the goal.

The setting takes place inside the Internet, so there isn't a very clear sense of realistic scale. The player's avatar might be very small, or the virtual world of cyberspace might be very large. Either way, the player has to clear a relatively long distance to reach the end of a level. However, the player's movement speed, with the help of the velocity gun mechanic, is quite fast, so they will be traveling the distance fairly quickly once they grasp the physics of movement inside the game world.

Every level is laid out on a digital grid, with spaces on the grid being occupied by various tiles. These are a few example tiles:

Some tiles are simply solid; the player can stand on them and launch from them, but these tiles could also obstruct the player's path depending on their placement. Other tiles may hurt the player if they collide with them, and some tiles may move around or disappear and reappear as time passes, requiring the player to time their movements carefully in order to proceed past them.

Every level the player enters is fully enclosed by solid tiles, and these serve as the outermost boundaries of the game world. There is no illusion of an open world, and this fits with the theme of the game. The game world is representing the Internet, a virtual space with no real-world equivalent. The player likely won't have the impression that there should be more places to explore beyond the outer walls, especially since their goal in the game is enclosed in the same space as they are. Also, as the Internet has been censored in the story, the player expects that they cannot move entirely freely; they are confined to the areas they have been able to infiltrate and unlock so far.

So, that about covers it. As you can see, Team VectorForce's is creating a project with both direction and magnitude. The physical dimension of the game is not complex when compared to most modern games, but we are confident that a fun and challenging experience will emerge from this mechanically simple game world.