Catie Gutierrez
ITGM 706- Game Documentation
Unit 1 – Exercise 1
Game Concept Document
Backstory:
The Nuclei Space Team are a group of long-time friends who were basically born on a space ship. They grew up in Nucleus1, a city known for its space-traveling spirit, on the planet Vimana. They are earning their bachelors in Space Science and Technology at the Academy of Amoebic Nebulae. After rooming together during sophomore year, they decide take their field-study semester aboard the Paraspeckle Space Shuttle together. While embarking on their journey from the academy’s mother ship, they board the five-decker space shuttle and head out towards their position at about 1,000 miles away from the Vimana event horizon. On their way, the navigation control on the Paraspeckle seems to malfunction and they find themselves being sucked into the orbit of a nearby star.
In a frantic rush to gain control of the shuttle, someone has accidentally put the shuttle into “de-shelve” mode, where the smaller, bottom layers of the shuttle dismantle, one by one, from the bottom level to the top level, and drop away into space! Players must reach the top level where they can climb into an escape bubble!
The shuttle contains everything from administrative to laboratory work rooms to entertainment centers and doors for authorized personnel only: suddenly the shuttle seems rather complicated to navigate through! Luckily the generative units (GU’s) in the shuttle are designed to know what the team members are thinking and keys to the doors can be accessed … but even the GU’s are going haywire!
As the players race to the top, their lives flash before their eyes, and visions of their past, from their upbringing to their first job, run through their head. Thusly, items on each floor start to resemble things from the various stages of their lives… the private home, school, office jobs and so on.
Through all the madness, the team remembers that they have worked together through-out their study career and their best bet is to count on each other to pull through. Besides, if anyone survives this dilemma, those who don’t help others out will look like total jerks. And the first to scramble to the top and leave everyone else behind would certainly seem guilty of having gotten all of them into this mess in the first place. So while players rush to the top, it would be in their best interest to help their peers along.
When they reach the top, they get to grab an atmospheric bubble (AB), to float back to their home planet. Oxygen storage units are leaking rapidly, so those who get there later will have AB’s with a lower oxygen density.
Gameplay:
On each level of the space shuttle, the team revisits certain point in their lives together. On the first level, players collectively hallucinate that they are in infanthood, and keys look like kitchen utensils. Each level requires a different kind of key to open all the doors on that level. Keys found in any level can be used in a higher level, but it will take more of those keys to open doors in higher levels.
The keys come in generative units (GU’s), which are designed to transport desired items from the space shuttle vault and dispense them when called upon. They’re a little defunct because the space shuttle is out of order, so it will be difficult to say whether or not they will have keys or something else in them. If players don’t get keys when they check the GU’s, they’ll get other random things that respond to the stage in their lives that they’re currently having a flashback about, which could either increase or decrease their karma score. Teddy bears and fake plastic space-food come out of the GU’s on the third floor.
Sometimes GU’s will be completely busted, allowing the player to crawl into it and come out somewhere else. In this case, the destination will be unknown to them.
The characters can give keys away, which can be used by any player at any time. When characters give their keys to their teammates, they gain karma points, which increase their chances of finding bigger keys.
The Key Exchange System:
Players will observe that they can give their keys to their peers, and that it seems to help their karma score. The players will be able to see how many keys their peers have, and they should give their keys to those who need them. If players have poor karma, they will be out of luck in finding keys!
Genre: As it is meant for multiple players and with its sci-fi and cartoony flair, it would make a good party game. It’s zany storyline and social dynamic makes it a feel-good theme and fun for the whole family.
Features:
Chance and strategy: Your actions can earn you a higher chance, so you use strategy to increase your chances of reward.
Social Dynamics: Your relationships with other characters will be built in the course of action you and they take.
Intuitive and yet complex gameplay: rules are easy to remember and top-down game map allows players to be aware of what is happening with their teammates.
Platform: the game would be ideal for the computer or X-Box and Playstation consoles. It could be adapted to the Wii-mote, perhaps if the controller were being used sideways, like the “old-school” Nintendo controller.
