These are all the Video games from various console generations, oldest being the gamecube and recent is recently released computer games (2019). I looked these games in hope I can capture the mechanics, level design, sprites and assest and even artstyle from these games and try to match them with the style/ mecahnics of my game for this project.
Punch Club is a retro turn based fighting game where the aim of the game is to become the worlds greatest boxer champion after making a promise to you dying father in the beginning of the game. The game lets you make choices on a daily (in game) basis which you can focus on getting tougher for fights, do jobs to earn cash or even fight other people to progress in the game.
The game plays a lot like the sims as you need to micro manage your player's health, hunger, money, energy and happiness while you aim for a end goal which is to become the worlds best boxer. The game is also very addictive and keeps you in the flow as you are always racing against the clock to do a certain amount of things each day before it ends.
You can do different things each day such as earn money so you can later buy food to then feed yourself. You can find people to fight with which gives you skill points if you win and these skill points can be used to upgrade your player's fighting skills by unlocking moves or traits which you can pick to use in a fight.
You can go to the gym and train your 3 boxing skills, Strength, agility and speed which all have their own skill trees and importance though the game recommends you focus on one of these than try to juggle all 3.
Since I played the game I chosen the Strength tree because I feel it was the most important out of the others and this is what I want to have for my own game if I decide to have a skill tree; why would the player want this skill over this other one and how dose this skill benefit the player and the progression of the game? Since my game is a Beat-Them-Up this is very important.
I also like the side activities/ quests which can open up new areas of the game, meet new people who later may need you to do more quests which in return give you a reward you with new items, quests or points. This would be another thing i want to add to my game, a side quest missions or activities which lets the player
The graphics are pixel art which gives it a 80/90's feel as that was the common graphics for videogames at the time.
I don't want to use pixel art as my main art style for my game I do however like the design and layout of the rooms such as the gym, stores, home, work places as they seem big enough for the player to wonder around and also the NPCs (non player characters) that the player can talk to in punch club, also adds to the location of where they hang out with the style of clothing and the dialog they speak.
I also looked at the settings as I want to add more options to my game and i found these options which I want to add to the Monica game:
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Resolution
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1920x1080
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1440x1080
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Screen size
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Windowed
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Borderless
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Full screen
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Sound Volume
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0 > 100%
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Music Volume
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0 > 100%
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This is one game I look at a lot as a good beat-them-up game because of the art style, the mechanics, the combat, boss fights and lastly the story which is a light mixture version of the original comic series and the movie adaption.
The game lets the player pick one character out of the four charcaters and with that character you can fight, level up and progress with that character until you want to pick another character.
Each character has their own skills/ animation sets, story cutscenes and levelling system which makes each character more unique. The game is simple and easy to understand, you keep heading right and you will soon encounter a number enemies which craetes a small arena on the screen which you need to defeat all enemies before the arena zone vanishes and you can advance further.
Along the way the enemy types will vary in type and skill which keeps the player thinking on how to encounter an enemy. When you defeat an enemy you will earn EXP which goes towards level up the player's character and also the enemy will drop some money which the player has to walk over to pick up before they disappear. Money can be spend to buy health, improve the player's combat stats: strength, defence and agility which can make combat in later levels more easier depending on what the player has chosen to focus on.
The player starts mission from a world map with each level being a yellow dot on the map which the player has to move too in order to start that level. The main story levels are form the comic and movie locations which is cool but are done in the pixel art style which makes it even more "Video Game" like.
When the player completes a level a new path on the main map is opened and the player can progress to a new level. The player also can replay missions to 'grind exp or money' to get an advantage later if the game is too difucult for the player to progress, also the player can go to the shops from the first level as they dont apear later on in other levels, this gives this first level more replay value but other levels have a uniqe feature which makes the player come back, if its for the boss fights at the ean of each level or even some secret area you can only find in that level.
The sounds and music are all 8-bit sounds and are very up beat and arcade like as you play the levels, although the sounds are constantly looping the same song throughout a level, even in combat the sound is the same song which feels weird but not immersion breaking.
I think because of my game having a punk rock sound track it would be good to have some "fighting rock songs" that suit the time period and then for quiet moments such as free roaming on the town map should have a "casual 90's music beat" kind of beat.
I'm going to look at this game for its excellent beat-them-up combat system, the damage, defense and agility stat system the game uses. I also want to look at the animations as there are a lot for each character in the Scott Pilgrim game and some of those I should consider making the same type of move sets for my own characters when they do certain things such as talk, idle, move about, die and attack.
Enemies will come at the player from all sides both left and right and the foreground and background which is a cool idea of having the enemies spawn in the game. The fighting mechanics are punching, kicking and dodging. If the player doges an enemy attack that said enemy will be vulnerable temporarily to attacks form the player which rewards the player for dodging attacks and give them an advantage in the fight. The player has lives and well as a health meter which decreases when the player takes damage form enemies. The player has a 'Power-up' form called 'VFX Power' which the player transforms into the Viewtiful Joe form his normal joe form. When the player is in VFX Power/ Viewtiful Joe the player has increased defence, health which helps in fights but the meter will slowly run out when in this form, when it runs out the player changes back to normal joe. The meter will slowly regenerate over time but can be replenished faster if the player finds "VFX Juice" around the levels.
When the player defeats an enemy the player is rewarded with V-points which are also given out if the player completes missions and activates in the game to be later used to buy new abilities.
The player also can replenish health from eating hand burger pickups found around the game as well.
Viewtiful Joe is a game created by Team Viewtiful (a development team under Capcom studios) back in 2003 for the Nintendo game cube as one of five games Capcom was releasing for the console. The game is a 3D side scroller fixed to a 2D path game with Cel shader graphics. The player is limited to moving left, right and jumping in terms of movement, the player can use an array of fighting moves to defeat enemies.
I'm looking at this game for the number of combat mechanics such as having a health bar and lives which I want to have for my player in my game or at least a health bar system. I also want my player to have 3 forms of fighting skills; punching, kicking and blocking/ dodging because I want my game to have simple mechanics and not have a complicated button-combo system like other beat-them-up games, instead having the player use 3 types of move sets to defeat an enemy would be enough as long as its fun to use them in my game. I also like the fact that health has to be replenished by eating food which would make me think about adding restaurants or vending machines around my game for the player to get food to refill the health bar. Lastly I would like to look at the money system form Viewtiful Joe as I like the idea of enemies dropping cash when they are defeated and the player can use that money to buy useful items or objects to help them in battle later.
This game is a demo within construct 3 which has the same mechanics I would like to replicate in my own game as both my game and this game are in the beat-them-up genre of games. This project can be found in the "Templates" Tab under the construct 3 games.
This game has very straight forward mechanics for a beat-em-up game, the controls are the arrow keyes to move about and the "D" key to kick. the enemies are easy to defeat as they have such a long wait before they attack the player but can be overwhelming to the player when they spawn in great numbers. I noticed the demo adds a few more enemies with each encounter which slowly makes the game harder which is something I need to think about for my own game; How difficult should it be for the player?
Im looking at the code for the game as it is programed in contructs game code which i am learning how to do more advanced programming with said software. The mechanics i am looking for are mostly teh combat stuff, things like: player attacking and hit boxes, enemies and their hit boxes, enemy death, player death, respawning and hud display.
So far from looking at this game's code i learned how to create a collsion box that deals damage when it is overlapping with an enemy sprite. Also said collion box is spawned in front of the player depending on which way they are facing and will disapear after a second, making the player mash the keyboard to attack an enemy within a short range and ultimatly deftaing that enemy when its health reahes zero.
At this point i managed to make a working player that attacks, dies from health below zero, respawns and can defeat enemies while also having working money + health system and working hud. I still need to look at this game about AI behaviour and have the AI find and move towards and then attack the player which will be my entire combat loop.
Here is me playing Monk Game and looking at how the player, mechanics and enemies all work together to make a working beat-them-up game.
I want to add the option for the player to block any attacks the enemy will atempt to throw at the player by pressing a button an a punch button that wont do as much damage as a kick attack but will be performed faster than a kick attack. I also want to be able to have enemies that will attempt to block a player attack sometimes during a fight if they get hit too may times in a row.
I feel like these chnages will add more gameplay value for the player as they will need to think a bit more on how to fight a single or multiple enemies. From the video above enemies can be grouped together and attacked all at once in a cluster which is pretty bad when making challanging fighting game. i think adding blocking an other means of attacking each other for both the player and the enemy more thought will be taken in fights and there will be less instances in cheating the combat loop.
Though adding these features may take up more time as i would need to mess around with new mechanics and ideas which i have no idea how to do at this moment.