Concept design sheet: The Cursed Castle...

Project announce:

Concept design sheet:

The Cursed Castle of Carmilla

or

The demonic castle of Carmilla

Laconic concept:

a 3d combat/platform set in castle full of monsters and traps.

Objective:

offer a challenging combat/platformer, a spiritual successor of first castlevania games done in 3d with more modern design.

Gameplay concepts:

two main gameplay focus:

1. platform: jump based platform puzzles, the focus of the platform sequences is to make the player think how can he reach the place he has to go.

   Something like a more limited Prince of Persia on PS2 (no wall running or acrobatic skills).

   They need to feel like a something that is possible to do with a trained body, not something from a circus acrobat reel.

2. Combat: simple but challenging combat, based around a simple combo and dodge.

   The combo will live open the character so he cannot just mash the attack button

   there will be special items with special uses.

Gameplay desing:

controls:

movement and camera will move as usual for a over the head Third Person game (Heretic 2 or Tomb Rider or any 3^rd Person game before 2006)

hard lock on/guard for combat.

jump.

Sprint.

Attack.

Dodge.

Interact.

Item.

Inventory.

Movement: the player will with a walk/jog animation by defult, and only Run when the sprint button will be pressed. During this walk animation the player will stop at ledges and he will not fall down.

Camera: typical over the head for platforming, a action centric camera when locked on (as Legacy of Kain 2 or Soul Reaver 2)

Jump: it needs to feel heavy, and the jump button will answer all the needs of platforming and climbing. The grab on ledge is automatic.

It could be possible to implement a simple wall kick mechanic?

Sprint: needed for run and a Long Jump. Also useful to run past enemies. It is possible to fall to death when pressing this and reaching a ledge.

Simple freerun?

Attack: A simple-ish combat system, the weapon has a definite set of attacks as a normal combo and a charged attack if the button is held.

Definite weapons or weapon types?

The attacks deal a high damage, and the combats are resolved rather fast for the common enemies. The challenge is that the enemies casue a lot of damage too and are very aggressive.

So the combat is fast, dangerous and brutal.

Dodge: subsequent presses of the dodge button make different dodges.

1 press Dodge 1> a single step evasion

2 presses dodge 2> Roll

Interact: common interaction with the surrounding

Item: a set of items and secondary weapons needs to be implemented, mainly as healing items and as powerful few uses weapons capable of destroy most of common enemies in one hit. (as original Castlevania sub weapons)

Inventory: a screen where to select items and weapons.

Level design:

simple “box” levels linked by doors or portals, so we can reduce the hardware requirements and have simpler development. Pretty much as DMC3 and similar game has their structure.

Artistic design:

the main word is Decadence and Excess. The castle needs to have gold and paintings and similar objects. It needs to look like a run down extra luxurious exaggerated mansion.

Baroque can give an insight on how things should be. Also a bit of Giger would not be bad.

If you are interested you could contact me in my deviantart profile.