Flashlight Marauders was first created as part of my Game Design 1 class in September of 2010. I wanted to step outside my normal gaming comfort-zone and into the one genre I tend to shy away from: First Person Shooters. I began to look at the genre for inspiration and realized that there weren’t any games that were “good for all ages”. That was when the idea of making an “FPS” designed around Flashlight Tag hit me. It presents all the same challenges, but without the blood, gore, and ultra-violence so prevalent in today’s “shooter” games.
In November of 2010 I further refined the game’s concept by completing the game’s Story Outline for my Storytelling class. The Outline included the full story progression through all 3 Acts of the Story Mode, a simple sample of dialog, key character descriptions, and game style notes for characters, monsters and environments. Following Storytelling, in January of 2011 I took the next design step during Economics by fleshing out the “in-game economy”. This step involved developing the design concepts behind systems for player scores, objectives, and in-game item acquisition/expenditure.
As of October 2011 I have begun utilizing Unity to take the next step in working on Flashlight Marauders. The work so far is very basic as I learn Unity, but utilizing the game as a testing ground is helping. Having a solid concept of a design is helping me delve further into Unity and programming which in turn is refining and improving the game’s design. It’s a circular process, but the circle keeps expanding as I learn and try more.
