TheLastGuardDevLog

2022-08-21 by StudioDonk

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The Last Guard Concept Development Log

Working Title

The Last Guard Concept Statement In The Last Guard, the player is a lone guard trying to survive against continuous hordes of zombies, while trying to collect currency to upgrade his survivability. The goal is to survive as long as possible with a progressive difficulty over time.

Genre

Action RPG -

The Last Guard is an Action game as it has real-time combat, so the player will have to think quickly to eliminate zombies and flee. It will also contain RPG elements such as collecting currency to power up your character with special abilities and playing a specific class.

Roguelike -

The Last Guard also falls under the Roguelike genre as there is no continuous progression in game, there is no saving in game, and the character gets reset to the base power for every playthrough.

Hack and Slash -

The simple gameplay of The Last Guard makes it fall under hack and slash genre where there is an element of simply eliminating enemies to survive.

Concept Creation/Areas and Influences

Source: Vampire Survivors Gameplay – poncle 2021. Steam Store Page

The concept creation process for The Last Guard was derived from the idea of a game that has simple gameplay and is easy to pick up but still difficult enough to encourage replayabilty, strategy, and competition. The game Vampire Survivors was the main influence for The Last Guard. Vampire Survivors is an Indie, Roguelike game released in December 2021 by developer Luca Galante(poncle). It has received a rating of 10/10 on Steam with 112,458 reviews. The gameplay is extremely simple: the player only has movement to avoid enemies. However, as the player progresses in levels, they acquire weapons that aid them in killing enemies to survive for longer. The game has a good level of difficulty that requires strategy to combine certain weapons and to make the character suit the user’s play style.

Another influence in the concept creation process of The Last Guard was Diablo II which was released in 2000 and was re-released in 2021 with some quality-of-life changes and a graphics update. The combat style of Diablo was a big influence on how The Last Guard will play. The aim is to have a basic attack (mouse button) and some abilities that are bound to other keys.

Source: Diablo II – Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard Diablo II Page

The Last Guard will blend desirable features from these two games such as the endless hordes of enemies from Vampire Survivors, and some gameplay mechanics from Diablo such as abilities and using the mouse to attack to make a top-down survival game. The idea for this style of game first came to me when I started on tutorials 8-15. During these tutorials I discovered that a top-down animated sprite game was not out of reach and can produce a nice looking and playing game with ease.

Audience and Competitive Analysis

This game is aimed towards all players, either casual or more hardcore gamers. The simple gameplay makes the game easy to pick up and the difficulty should keep people interested. However, it will appeal most to players who like action-RPG style games and survival games.

This game is directed towards an audience of 13+ due to its somewhat violent nature and the fact that hordes might be stressful for children. The game is fast-paced and packed full of action while the player is forced to think quickly about whether to stand and fight or try and maneuver their way through the hordes.

The Last Guard will feature a leader board based on how many zombies the player kills. This not only adds a competitive edge to the game where the player will play against themselves and try and beat their best score, but they can also play against their friends to hold the title of ‘King of The Last Guard’.

The competition The Last Guard will face comes from similar games such as Vampire Survivors, and the behemoth Diablo series. However, keeping the game simple will make the game more appealing for more casual players, and the ability to attack when the player commands gives it an advantage over Vampire Survivors which was a well-received game in the Steam community.

Game Treatment and Concept Art

Setting

You are the last standing line of defense to stop the kingdom from falling into chaos from a never-ending horde of zombies! You will traverse around the castle walls and adventure into ruins to collect resources. But be aware, you can easily get overrun in tight spaces! You will be armed with the finest arsenal the kingdom has, but will it be enough?

Gameplay

The Last Guard is a top-down Roguelike game in which the objective is to kill as many zombies as possible before the inevitable death of the character. Once the character dies all progress and upgrades of that character will be reset. The player will collect currency by opening chests which randomly spawn in x locations, and generate currency through killing zombies.

Mechanics

Movement - The player will have eight-directional movement which is controlled using keys: W,A,S,D.

Combat – The player will have an arsenal of abilities that will be bound to keys. Attack direction will be based on the player’s mouse position.

Initial ideas for abilities that are used by the player (Archer class)

There will be a shop system in which the player can spend the collected currency on upgrading their shoot, bomb, and dagger attacks, with potential for more abilities to be added overtime. The upgrades will consist of attack cooldown decreases, multiple projectiles, and other abilities. Each upgrade will increase the cost of the next one with the aim of preventing the player getting too powerful too quickly. When the player dies the abilities will be reset to the original values for the next playthrough.

Enemies will constantly spawn in a radius around the player. The spawn rate will increase as the gametime increases. When an enemy spawns, it will seek the player and attack. Damage will be dealt to the player when attacked. The difficulty increases over time due to the player having an attack speed – this limits the speed in which enemies can be defeated, which will result in the player eventually being overrun.

Design

The last guard will be a 2D tile mapped world that tries to capture the feel of top-down simple 2D RPG games. The sprites for both the player and the enemies will be animated and their animation will be determined on their velocity and the action that they are performing. The below images showcase the sprites for both the player and the enemies as well as providing a peek into the playable world.

Title screen showcasing the player sprite and the enemy sprites.

Gameplay screenshot of one of the structures that contains a chest spawner.

Audio

There will be audio sounds for the abilities of the player and zombie deaths that, when possible, will be custom recorded effects. Game music will be included but will need to be sourced elsewhere.