Concept Challenge - Robots in Space

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

Robots in Space

The game will be a 2D top-down space shooter and RPG. The player controls a robot who fights alien mutants. This will be a modern 16-bit game with a long and developed storyline; a large world and with a great replay value. The game will run on Windows 7 and Mac OS X, and will be in English.

Story

The game's story has taken inspiration from movies like Alien and 2001: A Space 0dyssey. The robot moves/looks like a human. The robot comes from Earth and is working on a space station, which will be attacked by mutants. The robot is given the task by the humans to defeat the mutants and save the space station crew. During the adventure, the robot will learn more about its origins. There will be a lot of small mutants, and some larger ones, which will be branded as bosses.

The robot will maybe be named OSSR. I may allow the player to rename the robot's name. I have not decided the names of the bosses. The usual enemies in the game will just be called mutants.

Gameplay

You'll see everything from the sidelines, like in the Zelda games. The robot can go forward, backwards, left and right. It is armed with multiple firearms, and there will be a tool inventory. The firearms can be found in different places in the game, and can also be purchased by a shop, where you also can buy ammo for the guns among other things, like armor and health packs.

The game will be divided in multiple levels in different sizes. You meet different kinds of mutants with unique attacks. There'll also be some turrets in the station, which the robot can hack through to put to good use against the mutants (it will trigger a puzzle-event, like in the BioShock games).

Graphics

The game will be built in 16-bit 2D-graphics. I chose it to get a retro feeling to it and it's fairly easy to draw the pixel graphics. I have designed the tiles (in the size of 64 x 64), with a space-themed, futuristic sci-fi design. I have not taken inspiration from any specific game, except some design-ideas from the video game Tibia, on the looks of the walls. Since the game takes place in a space station, the game world is divided into rooms of various sizes and designs. There are large rooms where you meet several enemies simultaneously, and smaller ones where you can find collectible items like ammo, armor, keys and health packs.

Many games have a futuristic setting with robots included, such games are nothing new. But no game is identical to any other. I don't know if there is a RPG game set in space with the kind of graphics that my game has.

Target Audience

The target audience are mainly young adults between 20-30 years, therefore, probably still studying (with no income) or working. Probably good thing to focus on people born during 1980s is that they might have children who want to play a game like this. The game focuses on people who do not need to think about their spending, but those who are economically independent (thus many adults) may not be interested in the game.

Without being considered too sexist, I can probably conclude that mostly men would want to play this game rather than women. It depends of course on who they are, and I may blame the gender norm. The game will be for PC, but you'll hardly need to classify yourself as a PC gamer for wanting to play it.

You might also be interested in retro games and the sci-fi genre, because no one else would want to go out of their way to buy a game like this.

Marketing

The game would be focused on the western market (ie Europe and America), because the western people can buy mostly anything.

I'll post shameless plugs on Reddit and Facebook. The internet is full of gaming fans and you can reach out to many people in an instance, especially if friends share your status, where you can write what it is we focus on (the target audience) so that the people may know about how the game will feel. One positive thing with Facebook, Reddit and other forums is that you can send direct messages.

I have looked at the name of the game, and I've found nothing. The name is easy to remember, both for me and for the consumers. It is a very exciting name, and people will understand how the game will be. The title describes the game better than I ever could. More specifically, in a space station.

I've not found a game similar to mine yet (at least in the gaming forum Indie Games Tooth). I've seen some games that have the word space in their names, but the gameplay is not at all similar. They're mostly strategy- and puzzle games, like Ultimate Space Commando.