Elemental Reign

Concept Statement

I often see complaints that we never have true horde games anymore, there's always objectives, or a time limit. Elemental Reign serves to introduce a game that just has a score, and an increasing difficulty - Instead of the conventional guns, bringing in an elemental twist. Imagine a mix of Risk of Rain 1 and Avatar: The last Airbender. The hope is to make a game where each of the four classes has unique roles of and abilities bringing the fun of Avatar into a 2D Horde mode.

Genre

The genre is an older one, being brought in by Gears of War 2.

Concept Creation Process & Influences

Initially speaking, I wanted to recreate risk of rain  (an action platformer roguelike), with Avatar style classes, but I realized that it was probably a very large undertaking. I also had the idea of recreating the elemental bending styles in a unity game, but I had nowhere to actually demonstrate them.

So, I decided to cut all the fluff from Risk of Rain, remove all the painful 12 characters - keeping just one - scrapping the ten different levels, and most importantly, the level objectives of a teleporter out. 

That was, until I was recommended Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the subsequent sequel, The Legend of Korra. This brought ideations forward of four elemental classes, as in the shows, each with different kits, but the same essential playstyle: Survive. 

The map and art will have the distinct pixelated Risk of Rain, likely heavily borrowing in style, at least for testing.

Following the risk of rain playstyle, kits will have four abilities:

• Basic attack
• Special ability
• Dodge
• Ultimate ability

To expand on the kits, at the beginning of ideation.

• Airbenders are essentially dodgers and blockers, leading enemies around, but lacking fatal finishing moves.
• Waterbenders have both offensive and defensive tools. A 'Midrange' class. Ideally some form of redirection mechanic, or healing skill, or slowing with ice.
• Earthbenders have strong defensive capabilities, able to tank hits. 
• Firebenders are the damage dealers, with damage over time.

The kits will be different enough to reflect each of these spells. 

Current horde modes in games in one of my main games, Destiny, requires standing on a plate, or some other objective, then you get a boss. You kill the boss, it feels good... then, you get loot, but ,there's no continuation. Call of Duty Zombies probably does Horde mode the best, in the current day and age, but there's still breaks. It felt good not usually dying to a single enemy, and swarms felt good.

Audience and competitive analysis

Realistically speaking, the audience here is a fairly niche one. Enjoyers of horde modes come from all kinds of backgrounds, but there is an audience subset from the total group of gamers, from Call of Duty: Zombies, Gears of War, Warhammer: Vermintide, Killing Floor. Each of these games are essentially shooters of first or third person perspective,  set in a varying time and space. Elemental Reign will end up as a third person two-dimensional 'true' horde mode, wherein the main objective is to survive non-stop onslaught. If you try to rest, you will die. The hope here is that such a premise is incentive enough for it to be tried by potential consumers. It is middling the line between hardcore and casual. It's a permadeath style game, which allows for replay ability, but many casual consumers may be perfectly satisfied with the horde-esque modes with objectives.

This kind of game wouldn't be anybody's first choice with the range of semi-horde modes in triple-A games already on the market, but for a lower end game made in Unity via one developer,  it might attract some audiences who expect less from a lesser game with less development time.

Realistically speaking, this game isn't intentionally creating any divides between the sexes, as both are fans of the show, though it possibly skews towards a male audience due to the nature of a horde mode video game being fairly hardcore.

Game Treatment

You wake up, your camp surrounded. 

It's been years since the event.  It's a wonder you survived this long.

Creatures of darkness, everywhere, out for your flesh and blood.

All you can do is fight with your elemental abilities given when the event occurred. 

You may as well be the sole survivor, all of them out for you, to claim their kill. 

They don't stop coming, and nothing you do can stop them, all you can do is hold them off.

Elemental Reign serves to be a game in which you have no holds barred but your time and determination in a 'true' horde mode, that many other games fail to deliver due to the injection of objectives cutting through the gameplay of simply killing increasingly difficult enemies. 

You must use your abilities of fire, water, earth or air to defend your life from increasingly difficult enemies.  You are in a world mixed between the abilities of Avatar and the gameplay and art style of Risk of Rain.

This is a game wherein you cannot relent, as your enemies will give you no quarter. There is no winning, only losing the least.  

Each of the classes has unique functions and playstyles, in playing a teasing, taunting airbender, a supportive waterbender, a hot-heated firebender, or the lumbering earthbender.