Rise of theTitans: Preview-review

There is a cool dude that I know at Twitter, he did a game for GGJ2011 too. The name is Rise of Titans. The game is pretty simple and it uses the mechanism of shooting trying to block the enemies from passing certain point. The art is pretty stunning, and the enemies shooting the ice wall and the light of the shoots give a cool "ambient".

What I will do here is a Preview-Review; "what is this?" you ask. Well, a preview is something you can see while the game still in development. A Review is something you do after the game is launched. A preview-review is something you write of how the game will look if some features are added.

Ok, the game was made for GGJ’11 but I have long fingers and all of them it’s shacking here to write about improvements. Also: this is a game that can be ported easily to iPhone with some design changes.

This twitter dude said “I really can’t understand what this crazy Game designers talk about”, well dude, I hope you got what this designer here has to say. xD

First: Meet the elements

We have enemies that vary between fast and slow.
We have the Titan: the player.
We have a HUD of the player’s life.
We have the (mental) line (end of screen) to be crossed.
We have the ice wall protecting the line.
We have the ice bolt to attack enemies.





 
Second: Interface

The enemies come from the top marching down trying to reach the “line”. The player is in the top of an ice mountain or something like that. And now we have the first problem: the HUD. Ok, the player has some amount of life to resist the enemies, but the HUD has to be up there? There is the space where I see the enemies coming: foots approaching. It is the space to think about what to do.

Behind the player we have a useless space of nothing, and there is a good place to put the HUD. It is a good rest place for the eyes and for the HUD.

This was the critical design thing to say about the game.

Now the cool thing:

Third: iPhone port

The iPhone screen is a different resolution, but this also creates a huge opportunity of FUN. See, you have a greater enemy space.

Things that could be: the player-character can walk right-left like the original, but it would be interesting also if he stays in the center of the “mountain” using his power. And not the straight line power. But let’s assume the power have some density. So the player can touch anywhere in the screen and the power goes there in a curve. The character doesn’t cast a spell, but throw the ice power. So the player can hit some enemy behind another enemy.

Why this is cool? Cause it can give a strategy feeling to the game. You touch some place and the power goes. Imagine the fast enemy, you touch him, but when the power goes there, the enemy is in another place. So the player will have to think where to touch to hit the guy.

Like the Ice Wall, why just put it protecting the line? Maybe some “shinning” appears in the screen and if you throw – for example - 5 ice powers there, a wall appears (Yup! random places).

Another thing is to put a MP HUD. In the original game the player can cast how many ice power he wants. But for this iPhone port would be great if a MP gauge decrease when some power is used. So if the player attacks like a maniac the MP gauge reaches zero. And to come back he will have to wait like 5 seconds (for example).

Also could be trucks that spill enemies from the middle of the screen. Oh, god. There is so many things it could be. Hehehe

Great job, dudes. Hope you guys could make something for iStore or Live soon. =)

Edit:
OOOOooops! I forgot to put the link for the game. \o> dooh!
Play the game [here]