Game Concept

Title

Hell is other farmers.

Concept Statement 

A farming simulator like no other, fend off other farmers with a variety of weapons and strategies as they seek to destroy your crops and take over your farm. 

Genre/category

Farming, Singleplayer, Action.

Farming comes from how you will need to plant your crops, tend to them, and wait for them to grow.

This game will be singleplayer only, with no multiplayer capabilites at all.

You will need to fight off the other farmers, with action packed shooting mechanics or close range weapon mechanics.

Concept creation process/area

I decided on this idea for the game as I wanted to make a small bootleg game heavily inspired by Stardew Valley, but thought just the concept of waking up in the house, leaving, growing crops, rinse and repeat was just a bit too boring for the project. From here I wanted to keep the idea of it being a farm and growing crops so I just thought to try and make it a kind of tower defenseish game, where you need to fend off other farmers from destroying your crops with various weapons, maybe destroyable barricades, etc.

Audience and competitive analysis 

The audience for this game will be anyone wanting a quick challenge without too much time needed to be put in. Appropriate for most ages with the exception of maybe small children due to the game having somewhat violent themes (Shooting, swords, etc). 

This games main competition would be any kind of tower defense esque game, and any game with an onslaught of enemies you fight off. As this game will be a 2d pixel art game, other 2d pixel art games of similar styles are naturally going to be competitors too.

Game treatment and concept art

This games world will comprise of 2 scenes, 1 scene being the inside of the farm house, and the other scene being the outside farm. If possible this will be increased depending on how the scope of the game changes over the course of development. The player will be able to do various things inside of the house, sleep to end the day/grow crops faster, some kind of way to heal HP, and maybe a place to buy crop seeds if development doesn't allow a 3rd scene with a store. 

The player will be able to aquire different weapons, examples being; a gun, a sword, a pitchfork, etc. The player will be able to utilize these weapons to kill enemy farmers that will spawn and attempt to kill the player & destroy the players crops. The player will have 8 way directional movement, and animations for all movements, the player holding weapons included. The enemy farmers will also be animated in a similar style, except they wil most likely only have 1 weapon. This will be increased if possible to have a wider range of enemies with different strategical approaches necessary.

The player will need to plant and maintain their crops, with system like watering, fertilizer, and things to make it grow faster. It is not decided the frequency in which you will need to do these things as of this stage.

The player will have some kind of an inventory system, whether it will be editable or a set inventory is not decided yet. This inventory will give the ability to store their crop seeds, weapons, etc.

This inventory will be visible on screen, with either hotkeys, or the ability to scroll through them with the scroll wheel. If possible i'd like to have both of these functionalities to improve accessibility.

The player will aquire currency by either killing enemy farmers, or fully growing crops. This currency will be used to buy more crop seeds (there will be multiple crops, with different grow times, prices, and selling prices.) It will also be used to buy more weapons, weapon upgrades, defensive objects and cosmetics.

The player will be able to place various defensive objects/barricades to block the path of the enemy farmers, giving the crops a line of defense. These barricades will be destroyed after a certain period of time/amount of hits given by the enemy farmers. 

This game will have a pixel art style, similar to the likes of old Pokemon games, and Stardew Valley.

The characters in this game will also have a pixel art design, in more of the Pokemon character style (see the image of Pokemon above.)

Beyond scope additions

Once all base scope functions have been developed, I will attempt to add some kind of character customization to the game. This will either just be in the form of cosmetic items consisting of: hats, different clothes, shoes, random addons to your character, or, you will be able to completely customize how your character looks from preset options when you begin the game. There will not be many customizations either way, as I am drawing all the assets myself.

If this is achievable I would like to have another scene(s) in the game that will consist of some kind of tower you climb, or dungeon you explore with different loot, enemies and a very special reward at the end. The reward would probably be the strongest version of whatever it is, whether that be a really strong weapon, tool or barricade. If possible I would like to make the differnet floors or dungeon rooms be somewhat randomly generated from a bunch of preset floors/rooms, potentially having random entrances to the next floor or room.