Game Concept

Concept
Super Stompy Kaiju Revenge is a game where you play as the final boss of a beat-em-up, stealing lives from the players trying to conquer you.  The kaiju you play as can only last so long against the endless waves of heroes until they manage to deplete your life bar and finally win the game for themselves, leaving you the loser.

Genre and Explanation
The game's genre is Arcade with some features of a beat-em-up.  One could argue that a beat-em-up is an arcade game but there are a few things that a beat-em-up would be expected to have.  The reason this game is more predominately an arcade game is because it doesn't contain any key features of a beat-em-up.  If the enemies get hit once they will die and the player only has a single of a move to do this.  Doing so will raise the players score until they eventually lose all their health and have to start again.

To call it a beat-em-up the player would have an array of moves to use against enemies and enemies would be similarly powerful.  To the enemies it may be a very unfair beat-em-up but to the player its not.

Concept Creation Process
I've always wanted to make a fighting game, but that would have been way too out of scope for me, even if it had two characters and only basic features like Footsies, there would still be too much complexity.  I figured I could make a very basic beat-em-up with only a few levels but then there could still need to be multiple enemy types, a few different attacks for the player, knock back or knock down states, a boss and possibly more.  Finally, I thought of a way I could make a beat-em-up without a whole lot of mechanics and art.

The idea I came up with was an beat-em-up anti-game where you would play as the final boss.  In my personal experience I have found myself stuck on the final boss many times, more recently in Streets of Rage IV.  The final boss in that game would be able to only take you down in a few hits and to go all the way with it and have the character defeat enemies in a single hit seemed fair enough.  Having you just fight a final boss would be an annoying concept for a game but if the player was the boss then maybe it could be fun.

Audience and Competitive Analysis
Making the main character a kaiju was inspired by the recent release of Godzilla Versus Kong.  The enemies that will appear in the game are also inspired by a media trend in Japan of men and robots who would become giants to fight off kaijus in movies and TV in the 90s.  These features help appease fans of older Japanese media, some of these fans may have also been playing beat-em-ups from the Sega and Capcom era.  This makes the game suited more to "nostalgia nerds".  However, it could be suggested that its quirky and interesting game design could be enough to draw any fan of Japanese pop culture or giant monsters.

Treatment and Design

The game will load to a title screen where the player can choose from either play, high scores or exit.  The game will start with the kaiju being in the center of the floor.  The player can control the kaiju with the WASD keys or arrow keys and attack with the space bar.  Enemies will come from the left and right of the screen moving towards the player trying to attack.  The kaiju has a set amount of health but the enemies can be killed by the kaiju with a single attack once they are in range.  When the enemies lower the health of the kaiju to zero then the game is over.

The focus of this game will be the art and the enemies' AI.  Firstly, there are going to be a couple of sprites for the kaiju and the enemies, which to suit the beat-em-up style, need to show a decent level of detail.  The kaiju is set to be a character that is bigger than the other characters so it can stomp, but the players need to see the limbs of the enemies so they can tell when they are about to make an attack.

The floor, which is most probably going to be an 8-lane street in a city, makes more sense to be left basic.  Other scenery to exist would be city buildings and sky which may be easy in pixel art.  All characters could be done in pixel art too which would make creating sprites easier for the enemies.  There will be restrictions on all sides of the floor to make sure the player cannot escape the scene.

Animations for characters will be time consuming, given that they need a walking state, standing state, 2 attack states.  Additionally, enemies will need a death state and while the kaiju will need both a death state and a hurt state.  There's no need for vertical movement so every animation can be flipped.  To make the sprites I will use a program called Graphics Gale, which lets me use references images, create drawing layers and make animations on a smaller scale.

The AI will be the most difficult part of the program.  Not only will enemies need to pursue the kaiju but the enemies need to have attack and have defensive strategies to make the game more arcady.  From experience playing beat-em-ups on the Sega Genesis, it is not uncommon to have enemies attack immediately once they are in attack range.  The attack range could be anything from rubbing up against them, to anywhere on the screen depending on the sort of attack they have.  Ideally, this needs to be somewhat replicated in the enemies AI somehow to enable difficulty.  Given the player will have health in an arcade game it makes more sense for them to lose health reasonably easily if the player is not efficient enough.

For example, an easy enemy could attempt to attack head on with fast attacks, while a more difficult enemy tries to get behind the player to make their attacks.  The difficulty can increase as more enemies are trying to attack the player at the same time which will occur as the game progresses.  As noted again in beat-em-ups, the attacks from the player should be faster than the fast attack made by the enemy.  All attacks will also have a cool-down and prevent the player from moving too, which will make it easier for another character to attack them afterwards and prevent the player from mashing the attack button so much.

Enemies will also avoid surrounding the player and attacking at the same time.  This can mean some enemies will stay behind while others move in to attack first.

two types of attacks should exist for variety, a fast punch attack with short range and a slow attack with longer range.  Slow attacks should be easier to react to but harder to avoid while fast attacks are something that prevents the character from continuously approaching enemies, trying to attack them.

In every beat-em-up game I’ve played, the way that an enemy attacks is based on its cosmetic features; Sprite and palette.  In turn this could also add to the art requirement.

Hit boxes may also exist for the characters too.  None of the characters are expected to collide with each other but their attacks require triggers so that while they are in an attack animation their attacks can connect and do damage.

A good nice to have for this game would be camera effects.  Besides being an arcade game with a locked camera it would be nice to have the camera shake every time the kaiju stomps, just slightly, to make the attacks more satisfying.  Instead the kaiju and the health bar could shake when the player takes damage from an attack.

In conclusion the end result is expected to be rather simple with many areas that can be improved with a little bit more work if time permits it.  This should make the production time affordable and give me room to implement any other changes that I might think better the game or just make it more fun.

References

1. HiFightTH, (2020), FOOTSIES [Video Game], HiFightTH.

2. Dotemu, (2020), Streets of Rage IV [Video Game], Dotemu.

3. Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) Directed by Adam Wingard [Film]. US : Warner Bros. Pictures.