Attack of the Robo Zombies!

After much mind-searching, I've decided to scrap my whole previous side project. In the end the entire thing would be a great venture in collision/mathematics but it would end up just being that. I thought back to what made me the happiest while at Full Sail and that was working on the gameplay and feedback features of Smashout. I really want to get back to that and I'm just plain tired of doing advanced collision research. It just isn't as much fun as it used to be.

So I spent sometime figuring out what a good new project would be. I decided to go back to what made Smashout so much fun to work on. I think the key factor was that we were not trying to emulate a game that was much bigger then what we could achieve. It was a simple arcade style game and was very limited in resources / etc. I then thought of an idea that was pitched to me by Mike Arnold: a gun that was modable so its behavior was effected (vs just increasing damage, etc). I decided to cross these. So what came out of it is "Attack of the Robo Zombies."

In ARZ, you will control a turret that can rotate around a level (which is all in complete view like Smashout) and fire a simple cannon ball style projectile. Your objective is defend small power nodes from being destroyed by hordes of Robo Zombies for a set period of time. Your cannon is not very powerful so to help in attacking the hordes, you will need to use Mods. Each mod takes up one slot (which only so many slots are provided) and will effect the behavior of the cannonball. So here are some examples:

• Gravity Mods : This will attract enemies towards the ball can be used to draw them to a particular area. You can collide enemies with the enviroment or shove them into holes. Multiple mods will increase the amount of enemies drawn to one ball.
• Combustible Mods: This will cause the ball to blow up when it hits a wall/enemy. More of these will increase the explosion. Hitting two or more balls together will create a bigger explosion.
  
• Rebound Mods: Every rebound mod set will deflect the ball off a wall/enemy.
  

So the idea is that you customize what behavior your ball will do when you fire it. Grant Shonkwiller gave me a good idea by suggesting that as you place more mods of one type in, you will unlock "Abilities" that go with those. For example, placing in X number of Combustble mods will allow you to trigger all the existing projects to explode. Put in enough Gravity Mods and you are given the ability to stop all the balls in place. Enough Rebound Mods will allow you to curve the ball after being fired.

I've always wanted to do a zombie game but since that is getting so cliche, I made them robots.