10 Page Game Design Document

This game is aimed at children of ages 4+ available on all smart phones and tablets. Made by Team Pizza. I have also shown possible designs for an app icon.

Story and Gameplay

The game starts with the enemy taking most of a pizza hostage, and the slice that’s left happens to be the hero, Pizzaman. He goes through levels defeating different bosses, and recovering his friends, each of them grant him a new power to use, that will aid him in rescuing the others. By the end of the game, he has recovered all of his friends, they go back to the slice.

Game Flow

As the player goes through the game, challenges become harder, and require certain abilities, for example, when the player defeats the first boss, they are granted the ability to use an ice beam, which will help in the second level at points that need to be frozen. This ties in with the story because its one of your slice friends that give it to you.

Characters and Controls

The player controls the hero, Pizzaman, who is tasked with recovering the rest of his slice from the bad guys. Pizzaman doesn’t have the ability to jump, swings on a web made of cheese. The character doesn’t change, however it does develop and gain new abilities after every level.

Main Gameplay concepts and platform specific features

The gameplay has a similar to feel to a platform style game, but has elements of a spider man game that I played on the Playstation 1. The movement and look makes it feel like a platformer, however the combat style of shooting objects at enemies, and swinging from cheese gives it the Spiderman feel. If you were to play the game on a PC rather than a phone/tablet, a player would be able to be much more accurate with things, EG, the shooting and the swinging.

Game World

The game will take place in different environments, depending on the boss of that level, for example, the Iceburg Lettuce boss is hiding in a snow land, the Jalepeno boss is king of the volcano. The mood changes as the player goes through the game, things start looking more evil, and through the cut scenes, it appears likely that the hero will not succeed.

Interface

When the game loads up, the player will see a title screen, where they can view leaderboards and go into the options menu. The music that’s playing changes as the player goes through the game. The closer the player gets to end of the game the happier the menu screens sound gets, the more bright colours are used.

Mechanics and Power UpsGameplay mechanics: A unique part of my game is the ability to use the cheesestring, it creates more varied gameplay, which could benefit the player, or could prove to be a drawback, but either way gameplay for each player will be different according how they use their abilities and the cheesestring.

Powerups mechanics: Because of all the abilties the player gets anyway, powerups aren’t really something I consider, what with some people complaining when a game is too easy.

Enemies and Bosses

Depending on what environment and what level the player is on, the player will face enemies and bosses from that area. The enemies tend to be just smaller versions of what the bosses look like. So for the iceburg lettuce, the enemies are just smaller, greener looking versions. The AI responds to the player and will follow them when seen.

Cutscenes, Bonus Material and Comps

The cutscenes are done as a comic book, so you see a scene, read the text, or put the voiceover on, then move on to the next box. At the end of each level the cutscenes start. There will be a prologue and epilogue, both with cutscenes. There are achievements to unlock, that you will only be able to complete after you’ve completed at least a portion of the game. For example using the fire power you unlock on level 2, on the level 1 once you’ve unlocked it.

The new Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Mario Bros comes out for consoles around the same time. However because of the fact that these Games are for consoles only and “Whole Load’a Dough” is only out for Smartphones, tablets and PCs I don’t think This will be too much of a problem.