Overview
What is Mechdog?
MechDog is an Endless Runner project that is planned as my first Android release. You take control of MechDog, a dog in mechanical battle suit that races across the desert to escape his pursuers who you have stolen the mech suit from.
Everything you see in this post is work in progress.
Abilities
MechDog's suit has three abilities:
Jump
The suit has the ability to launch itself into the air allowing the wearer to leap over hazards without losing speed. The suit can also land on enemies after a jump to destroy them.Thrust
When in the air, the suit can use its ion thrusters built into the arms to keep the suit from losing altitude.Slam
Also when in the air, the suit can reverse its arm thrusters to thrust itself down to avoid above-ground hazards and damage enemies directly below.
Design
Why for Mobile?
I wanted to develop an Android release to follow up my internship at Gameloft, a mobile games studio. I had created two experimental mobile games in my senior year at school in which I found tackling touch controls to be an interesting design challenge. Making a mobile game allows me to continue exploring this challenge.
Why an Endless runner?
The Endless Runner genre is a matches well with the constraints of touch controls. With forward movement being automated, the player can focus on executing other actions and abilities. This in theory allows me to design for more exciting moment-to-moment gameplay without worrying about overburdening the player with information.
How did I decide on the abilities?
This project got its start after I read a design article about how add more nuance to jump mechanics. Feeling inspired, I launched unity and messed around with a jump mechanic that had more force the longer your pressed the jump button. This is where the 'Thrust' mechanic evolved from; having more air control tested better within my small test group. Thrusting seemed like a good way to compensate for the lack of lateral control.
The 'Slam' mechanic was initially meant to just be a band-aid solution. After implementing a jump and some test enemies, there were instances where the player missed landing on enemies to take them out. I added a slam instead of tweaking player physics as a quick solution. Again this option appears to work because it gives more control to the player. In addition I assigned the slam to a swipe down gesture to exploit natural mappings with touch controls.