YEAR 3 - BA3b - Trying to find a theme/ creative direction - DUELETTE

I've been trying to figure out the theme of the game and how I'm going to overcome the issue of people trying to use the sword as a weapon. It got me thinking about how music notation essentially has set heights like the game does and whether or not that could work as the theme for the game. The players would move up and down and fire notes at different pitches to cooperatively create tunes, whilst also defeating enemies of some kind in different locations and music styles. The player could unlock new instrument types as they progress.

I developed this version of the game in a couple of days and whilst, interesting I realized quite quickly that it was far too big of a jump to make from the previous design. I also learned that GameMaker: Studio doesn't handle overlaying SFX particularly well, so I'll have to keep that in mind whilst working on the regular version of the game. The experiment does allow the player to create tunes though and I quite like it because of that.

I also developed a slightly different version where you play as treble clefs and you can reflect notes back as well as SHIFT into a sharp note. You use WASD and the ARROW KEYS to control the two characters.

I'll include DUELETTE in the hand in. Press 'P' twice on the main menu to see the 2 versions of the game.

I'd like to include some variation of this as a specific stage in the game maybe or as a boss in the single player version of the game because with all the extra stuff the regular game contains on top of this, it could be quite enjoyable.


I'm aware from testing that players think of the sword as a weapon that they can attack with, which isn't what it's for. I've developed another character that might explain how the character can hover, shoot and reflect and it's a cave/dragon creature that looks a bit like a bat.

These are the original concepts. The skinny legs on number 2/4 I liked because they look easy to animate. I also like the two colors on 2/4.

This image shows what unlock-able colors and cosmetic items might look like on the character. It seems to fit the theme and mood of the game and I like how the different colors feel like they're from different areas in the world and the cosmetic items could be things they;ve picked up on hteir travels. It helps to add a feeling of depth to the game world.


This is what the character looks like in game. I had to simplify it a bit for the lower resolution. I like the flapping wings; I think they improve the feeling of floating but as a character I don't think this guy is particularly likable or iconic and I know how important that is for a marketable game so I'm going to keep trying things out.