It's a pirate on some sand! I nearly gave up on this, just nothing I really want to do with it. I really wanted to properly utilize the theme - as in make gameplay pertinent to the concept of "Islands". That is, disconnected areas that must interact in some way. Things I thunk:
- Online 'play every day' type game where you get plunked at a random spot in the ocean and can build your island bigger and bigger and put cannons and whatever on it, and attack other islands and all that. Your money from mines or whatever would arrive once each day, then you can spend it all you want and assign orders to ships or something, and then wait until tomorrow for it to happen. Too complex.
- A puzzle game. I was never quite sure how it would work (which is why I didn't do it), but there would be islands and then you could click on coral reefs to 'grow' them, making them come out of the water. The reefs would be tetris shapes, and the point would be to use them to connect the islands, making their colors match or something. I don't know.
- Visuals and gameplay of Joust (except you're on a dragon so you spit fireballs instead of actually jousting). But meta-gameplay of Elite or other space sims. You fly from sky-island to sky-island hauling goods you buy at the islands, trying to find other islands where they are worth more. Spend the money you get on other things to trade or on dragon upgrades. I like this, no reason I didn't do it except I knew I couldn't get enough buyable stuff and interestingness done in time.
What I ended up with: Totally throwing out the theme except cosmetically.
Infinite Deadly Islands Of Terror. Name highly subject to change. All I know about it is that you are a pirate, the islands are randomly generated, you move from one to the next and each one is harder and bigger, and the gameplay is a roguelike, but with action instead of turn-based. I don't know if that will actually happen, I'm basically just throwing down the parts I know and going with it.
The real kicker in all of this is that I know I could make a very cute looking island adventure... if I could 3D render the pirate and evil kiwi birds. But I don't have easy enough access to my old 3D computer, so it's more of this pixelly junk. I need to get Daibaka Max done and earn myself 3D Studio on a working computer! It's very demoralizing at this point. I did draw the pirate head at 4 facings though. And his body is a plastic peg. Terrible pirate accident, ended up with a pegbody.
