Galaxy Chomp Kickstarter
Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:34 am
Galaxy Chomp, a rogue like game of saving the galaxy [url][/url] $16,000 target so go have a look. You see, in Galaxy Chomp, you pilot your ship from a top-down perspective, much like many other spaceship-y games. Much unlike many other such games, however, you do not control your weapons. You do HAVE weapons, sometimes in great supply, but they handle the targeting and firing themselves. All you have to do is fly your little ship through space and not get killed. How hard could it be?In addition to the more tactical ship-controlling work, you'll also be handling more strategic problems like which ship parts to equip, feeding your crew, and so on. Do you engage that massive enemy fleet and try to wipe them out? Do you fire up your warp drive and blast past them? Perhaps you try to slip by unnoticed with your cloaking system. If you do fight, what kind of weapons do they have? Is your ship properly equipped to defend against them? Don't be the one who brings shields to a missile fight.
There is no hard time limit, no. The game's designed to force you to keep moving, but there is no "clock" or anything to worry about. There is a resource called power that is always draining at all times, and you need to find cheese (which is what ships are powered by, don't cha know?) to refill your power bar. However, cheese is a fairly rare item, and spawns less and less frequently the longer you dally in a certain area, so it compels you to always be moving to the next part of your journey. As for the final goal, right now you need to make it back to the center of the galaxy (where you start the game) with all the story items. In the design we have an additional "endgame" where you actually return to your home galaxy with the items and have to use them to save the day. Whether that ends up in the game will depend on playtesting (would it add something that feels missing from the end?) and time/budget constraints. If it gets left out just because we run out of time, it will almost definitely get added in someday in the future in a patch or expansion or something. As for customizing your ship. Each ship has several part slots. You find parts out in the game world. Each part has a category, as does each slot, such as "weapon" or "defense". Some examples of defense parts are shields, armor plating, and a point defense beam that shoots down incoming missiles. For weapons there are a variety of beam weapons, plasma weapons, mass drivers, missile launchers, and torpedo launchers, among others. There are currently 5 part categories: Weapons, Defenses, Movement, Assistance, and the creatively named Other. Some parts (all weapons, for instance) have a "tier" which determines their strength. So a tier 2 torpedo launcher, for instance, has a faster cooldown, and fires torpedoes with more damage and explosion radius than a tier 1 launcher. (Most of) the parts start out unknown, so all you will know is that you have found a "red weapon" or something, but not what kind of weapon it is. You learn what kind it is by equipping and using it. Once you have done that, you will always know what all "red weapons" are for the rest of the game, but each new game all of that is randomized again. If the goal is not met, what we do next will depend on why it was not met, if we can determine that. If it isn't met because, say, people just needed to see prettier graphics before they were willing to pledge, we will try to get some initial final artwork into the game, and then try the Kickstarter again. We're estimating the game will take about 8 months to complete, and that is with the Kickstarter funding, so without it it would take a very long time to do, unfortunately. I honestly can't see us just dropping the thing, so I can say that I really sincerely doubt a Kickstarter failure would mean the game will never ever see the light of day. But it is really up in the air right now, so I can't say anything for certain! EDIT: Forgot to mention, I will be posting an update to the Kickstarter tonight that talks about some of the gameplay mechanics, and it will have some gameplay footage from the current build, too. You can see that here: [url]http://kck.st/Wg2R3L[/url]