Mecha-Taur

Concept:

You and a friend are stuck in a futuristic gladiatorial arena in a distant world. To be free, you must face your final opponent: the Mecha-Taur. After you’ve chosen your Heroes (each with unique abilities), it’s game on! You’ll take turns rolling and using your abilities against the Minotaur. As the game progresses, Mecha-Taur transitions to different phases, making the battle progressively harder. In the end, only you or the Mecha-Taur will survive!

Aim: 

Two players are cooperatively trying to defeat the Mecha-Taur. They do so by using their abilities (based on dice rolls) to reduce Mecha-Taur’s health to zero. Since it’s cooperative, the players will either win or lose the game. Although the story concept is simple, it builds itself as the players progress through the phases.

Tone: 

The aim of the game is to be intense, but in a cooperative manner. As players get to the end, I want them to feel the excitement of every roll. 

Subject Matter: 

Because the game is mainly focused around the battle, I don’t expect there to be anything that makes players uncomfortable. 

Why did I make this game?

When I was 10, I created a “hockey simulator” game with a pair of dice and a notebook - I’d spend hours rolling the dice and simulating entire seasons of hockey. This game combines those simple dice mechanics with another love: sci-fi. I’ve wanted to make a game like this for a while. In the future, I think it would be really cool to expand this to include different bosses to play against. 

Magpie Elements

I used a ton of Magpie elements for this! From my list of obsessions in Magpie #2 I pulled my obsession with Sci-Fi for the theme because I thought it would make a cool setting. Although I didn’t take any specific items from Magpie #4, I used the concept of “choice” to design the “OR” functionality in my game which allows players to choose which effect occurs. I love the autonomy this adds to an otherwise mostly “RNG” based game. Magpie #7 included the places we spend time in. For one of them, I described (and drew) IKB. Although I had to cut the description from my final draft, the austerity of the building inspired my design of the battle arena. Magpie #9 had us drawing shapes, and this actually inspired my design of the Mecha-Taur head in the game (if you look closely, you’ll see it’s composed of individual shapes mashed together). I think the idea makes for some really cool art (especially for someone like me without a ton of experience!). Finally, Magpie #10 was super formative in my game design. One of the elements of my game is that players often get to choose where something gets directed (do I heal myself, or heal my teammate). Players can choose to play cooperatively, or a bit selfishly. Sometimes there’s even a strategic element to this. The concept came from my observation in my journal. I also got the idea for my “damage” system from a Magpie entry: when watching a video on Runescape, I was surprised to find how engaging a super simple combat system that involved a lot of randomness was. I incorporated a similar randomness in my game. 

Themes, Craft Elements, and Design/Mechanics

The central theme of the game is survival as you battle against the Mecha-Taur. Since it’s cooperative, there’s also an element of friendship, coordination and potentially even self-sacrifice (depending on how you play). My game has two main craft elements: dice rolling and rock-paper-scissors. Players roll to determine their actions each turn. If a player rolls a six, they must engage in a “Rock Paper Scissors” battle against the Mecha-Taur (Mecha rolls a dice to determine their action). If they win, they’ll get to use a super strong ability, if they lose, it’s significantly weaker. The board design for the game is relatively simplistic. For the “Mecha-Taur” logo, I actually used the “shapes” idea from our Magpie book (making something out of a bunch of shapes). I tried a couple different styles for the boxes, and eventually settled on the “tattered” look. For the Mecha-Taur, I wanted it to be really clear which phase players were on, so I color coordinated the “Phases” with the health bar. The mechanics were inspired by Runescape. When I was watching a video on it, I was fascinated by how enthralling and intense the combat could be even though it was just two characters standing there while RNG rolls determined whether or not there was a hit. I added the “RNG” element with the dice. The Rock Paper Scissors element was inspired by a discussion with a classmate. I liked the “win-tie-lose” idea. Also, if another person wants to join, they do the RPS for the minotaur, which adds a whole extra “mind games” element to the game. 

What do I hope players walk away with? 

There’s a certain excitement that comes with making a final dice roll to win (or lose) a game. I’ve worked hard to develop a “phase” system for my game which should (hopefully) make it so most games have a “climactic” ending. In class we discussed how the bigger the stakes are, the more satisfaction a player gets on completing a game. I want players to walk away with the feeling that they’ve just defeated a difficult boss.