The short story:I'm working on a new game called Boss 101. You might have guessed already but it's a game where you ONLY fight bosses/boss battles! I like to think of it as Pacific Rim meets Adventure Time. Ambitious, huh?!?! HAHAHA!
It’s early but I wanted to give the Stencyl Community the VERY FIRST public look at what’s going on. I have the feeling most people here can appreciate the blood, sweat and tears one puts into a labor of love. Bear with me – it’s a long post if you want to read it all!
FIRST - you can now play the demo here on this site...
The slightly longer story:Boss 101 is designed to be about fun gameplay with short, easy to get into rounds. It’s a side scrolling shooter and the idea is for people invest 2-3 minutes of time a round. There are gun upgrades, a store for dress up items and decoration as well as a constant stream of boss variations. Additionally – there is constant dialog between the player and the main characters.
At the heart of the game is the boss creator. A fully procedural way to create new bosses from a pool of heads, bodies and weapons. With over 100 of each to choose from there is little chance the player will get the same game over and over. Additionally the dialog system is designed to keep the players interested in what’s going on with the main characters Max (your alter ego) and STEVE (the jetpack). The game doesn’t take itself too seriously and regularly breaks the fourth wall with the player to keep the mood light and the pace interesting.
Basic Ideas:• Short rounds designed to be fun, challenging and varied.
• Varied commentary between STEVE, Max and the bosses
• Fun looking characters and settings to battle in. Constant stream of new enemies and situations
• Layered gameplay - not too hard for casual pick up and play.
• 101 levels, 101 bosses to beat, collection and upgrades throughout
• A procedural system to allow for millions of variations including a chicken headed samurai robot.
Some screens from developmentThe current Make a Boss screen (the demo has an early version)
A portion of the upgrade panel
One of the first gameplay screenshots from the Android version
Gameplay with STEVE and Max getting slammed by rockets
Gun Upgrades include the mighty Fist Cannon
Rounds always start with some banter between Max, STEVE and the boss
Bosses talk too
Here are some examples of the kinds of bosses you might randomly roll
A Monkadactyl on a rampage
The Triceracluck firing rockets
Winged Dogasaur
BrontaDogasaurus. Very tough, very slow and VERY hard to kill!
One of the Seven Samurai Bots with side splitting sword action…
Plot (if you're still reading):You are Max, a teenager who finds an alien jetpack and ends up saving the world by accident.
Aliens landed on Earth and are taking over cities across the world. They've created what they think are the most feared bosses of all time. Mechanical dinosaurs, robot samurai, and even domestic cat and dog bosses. Armed with alien tech, kitty missiles and water balls they are daring the human race to come and reclaim what it rightfully owns.
Their ultimate goal is conquest but they didn’t count on one of their own rebelling and joining the Earthlings. Unfortunately for Earth, the robot to leave was the least liked, most sarcastic of all, a robot named STEVE.
STEVE makes his way to Earth and teams up with Max. From there they go around to various overrun cities and start taking out the bosses. Using the captured boss brains they build an Ultra Gun (so powerful it destroyed Earth’s second moon) to defeat the last, most fearsome of the robots – Boss 101.
My backstoryI got Stencyl about 3 months ago and had no prior programming experience. It was a godsend and pretty easy to get into thanks in HUGE part to the community here being super helpful. I’ve been having a blast making this game and hope to make many more. My background is in the games industry but I have not gone it on my own until now. I did a lot of research about possible game engines and for what I wanted this was by far the best fit.
My plan is to wrap up development in September and do a twofold release. First to the web and then to the iOS and Android. I’ve never done anything exactly like this before but so many people have been so nice and I can’t thank everyone enough.
Help, comments and suggestions are more than welcome. Also – I will answer any and all questions I can.
Thank you so much and more to come soon!
-Tim
