Saturday, January 06, 2007

A little late

Okay, so maybe it wasn't later that day, but at least I'm delivering!

Overlords is a game heavily influenced by both Dynasty Warriors and my previous major project, Zombie City Tactics. Each game takes place in a city about 30-60 tiles across, constructed out of walls and Generators. Each generator can either belong to the Player or the Enemy. Generators periodically churn out soldiers, which will automatically move towards and attempt to capture enemy Generators. Different generators can produce different types of soldiers, so controlling the most powerful and well-placed generators can be key to victory.
The player controls one soldier, the Hero, who is exceptionally powerful. His job is to rush into combat and mow down enemy soldiers, pushing them back enough for his allied soldiers to gain victory in battle and move on to capture generators. He will be able to execute some number of special attacks, and recover lost health by resting near allied generators (enemy generators will also restore health to nearby enemy soldiers).
Now, the objective of the game is not necessarily to capture all generators and claim the entire city - that is only a means by which to force the beginning of the endgame. Once the player controls a certain number of generators, one of the remaining enemy generators will produce an Overlord. The Overlord is extremely sturdy and dangerous, with abilities to teleport, summon powerful soldiers around itself, and so on. The Overlord will crash through the allied army on a direct warpath towards the Hero, and attempt to kill him. If the Overlord for a city is defeated, then the game is won. If the Hero is killed first, the game is lost.
Game movement is realtime, but tile-based. Remember Chip's Challenge? Sort of like that, only more action packed. I'm mostly doing it that way because I'm on a time budget, and it'll be much easier to program than letting beings move freely. The player will also possess the ability to command nearby allies in some limited form, but I haven't worked out the details on how that will work yet.

So that's the basics of Overlords. I don't know if it'll be fun or not, but I intend to make it!