Shattered Sword
Game Design Document

by Henry Chen, Kelly Peng, Xinyu Xu

INTRODUCTION

This document describes a game called “Shattered Sword, ” which is designed to be a simple, 2D platformer, roguelike game. The game will employ sprite-based animation, tiled backgrounds, collision detection, physics, AI, gravity, efficient memory management, render threading, and more basic 2D game techniques.


TECHNOLOGY

Shattered Sword will be developed for the Windows Platform using the McKilla's Gorilla game engine, which is a bare-bones engine developed by Richard McKenna for rapid prototyping 2D games. DirectX will be used as the underlying rendering technology. Aseprite will be used to create sprites and tiles.


BACK STORY

Hiro (hero) is the prince of a fallen kingdom that was destroyed by an evil monster. The monster has shattered the legendary royal greatsword, the only weapon powerful enough to slay the monster. The first piece of the greatsword was given to Hiro as the weapon. Hiro must go on a journey to retrieve the five pieces of the greatsword to slay the evil monster and bring prosperity back to his kingdom.


OBJECTIVE

Hiro must travel the five regions in which the sword shards are scattered to collect the pieces to reassemble the sword. Each shard is guarded by enemies, and a boss that will seek to stop Hiro. Enemies have the chance to drop buffs or amulets that will strengthen Hiro on his journey. Once Hiro has obtained a shard, the enemies in the other regions will become stronger since they have had more time to absorb the energy of the sword shard they are guarding. Once Hiro has reassembled all six pieces of the sword, he will finally be able to face the final boss.


GAMEPLAY

The game will work like a platformer, with Hiro able to run left and right, and jump up or down onto platforms and other surfaces such that we may scroll up and down. Hiro will have to be careful with the enemies that he encountered along the way. By completing each level, Hiro gains back one pieces of the sword shard at a time. After passing the first 5 levels, Hiro will be able to defeat the final boss with the completed sword.

There are three types of enemies besides the final boss:

Possible buffs gain from defeating elite enemies:

Besides the temporal buffs above, the player can also gain permanant buff from killing mini bosses. After killing each boss, the main character can gain:


CONTROLS

This game will be played using either a keyboard or a xbox controller. Once started, use the following: Keybord (xbox controller) - function


GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE


ARTWORK

All artwork in the game will be original. The following needs to be created:

SOUND EFFECTS

All sound effects will be original. Sounds must be made to coincide with each of the following events:


MUSIC

Game Music will be added when time permits.