For Sprint 5, our team focused on getting ready to challenge with our game Toybox Shooter
This prototype was the one that we decided to go with due to a couple of reasons, First of all our team’s dynamic really jelled with the game play mechanics, artstyle and development ideas. The gameplay is extremely fun and every one of us has a blast playing it already, meaning that is makes it that much more accessible to get in the mood to develop. The artistic aspect is very appealing for Colton and Bryce because they can focus on modeling and VFX rather than animation and texturing which are their strengths. Charlie and I get to work on fine-tuning mechanics, systems and levels which means we can really make the main game-play loop exciting and fun for every player.
The next reason why we are picking this game is due to the insane amount of support from QA testing. Almost every player has compared the twin stick shooter game favorably to our other prototypes and makes it known that there is a large target audience that would be willing to play the game concept.
The innovation of this game concept comes from the very short levels of 1 hit kills and death, bouncing bullets, and co-operative gameplay. There are plenty of twin stick shooters out in the market at the moment doing very well, but our innovation through the systems and the game-play will set our game out from the competition, especially with the co-op component. Since the cooperation is so ingrained in the gameplay experience, the players will get an extremely skillful game that needs them to have their communication on par with aiming skill. The speedrunning and competitive gamers will take a liking to the competition that innately comes from the gameplay mechanics. Overall this game concept is our strongest one and while it took us a while to find it, the quick iteration and the smaller scope will let us quickly catch up to where we need to be in production.
Ethan Loewald 