Quick GDD

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To ensure a strong starting plan, I'm posting a micro form of the GDD, to act as a guide.  Its not that normal, so I'll give a little direction as to how the sections are used, if needed.

Title: Codavore

One Liner: Fix and manage broken space ships with your mad programming skills.

30 Second Commercial:
(The 30 second commercial is a list of how we will show the game in a commercial.  It is NOT supposed to be visual yet.  The objective is to use this as a target. If it doesn't get us to the 30 second commercial by taking real clips from the game, then we don't do it yet.)

  • Top down perspective a ship flying in space and suddenly sparks show up from the right thruster while this ship begins dragging/turning to the right.  
  • "I know its broken, I'll fix it."  You see the text show up in a chat window, with your character's icon.  It transitions, leaving this view of the text window.
  • The transition is our hero walking through crampt area.  Obviously the under belly of the ship.  while climbing through, the bonk their head on a pipe.  A Comic "Thump" shows up, and the text in the characters chat changes to "oowf".
  • The player arrives at a panel, and then we transition to a code view, and then expand a view of the parts of the ship laid out.  You can see the engine that was sparking blinking red, and see fuel lines, controllers and fuel tanks.  
  • You click to expand the code view, and put in code that reduces the both the left and right engines to operate at 40%.  Click/Paste type setup.
  • Zoom out and the ship sparks go away, and the ship flies stops turning and now flies straight.


Why it will be fun:
For the same reason's programmers find programming fun, those creative solutions, this game will bring those as clearly and easily to the surface as possible. Players will be presented with easy fragments of code that have very clear effects, given testing grounds to play with it, no matter what the effect, and to provide a constantly expanding playground of space ships, code possibilities and challenges.  

Why it will sell:
The game should be free, but with the option for microtransactions.  While you can write code, you could also ask for the code, or get working parts to replace the broken ones.  I.e. you don't need to write code to circumvent the engine problems, if there are no engine problems.  With Story and events, the player may want more permanent solutions, such as getting a warp drive earlier to get into more of the game faster/out of the tutorial.  The player should be able to code everything without limitation, but the working parts, or faster broken parts, may be cool to work with.  Also player and ship customization.

Appearance:
Low Poly, Cartoonish art style. Well lit for a physical feel, but boxy.



And I'd like to provide some development screen shots and stories with every article.  This one is a concept of our programmer looking at a screen in a smaller ship.




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