Games and Theory # 1

I want to base the game dynamic like that in Robotron, Defender and Llamatron. That premise is basically "save all humans", something used in Half-Life. I will be including the game dynamic of having the aliens swoop down and grab people from the ground, rise up into the air and the moment they get high enough they mutate into a nastier spaceship.

I also found this, the final official William's Defender game, called Striker Force...

Strike Force is an arcade game that was released by Midway in 1991.

The game shares many features with earlier Defender and Stargate in that play takes place in a horizontally-scrolling play field above a planet's surface on which humans are under attack from alien invaders. In all three games the player gains points and other advantages from protecting and rescuing humans from these attacks.

Strike Force adds several new features; two players may share the screen at one time, the surface of the planet is littered with various special weapons that can be picked up and deployed, the humans can be "mutated" into small green creatures that will fight against the player (although the player may still pick them up for points as with the unmutated humans). The mutants may use vehicles found on the planet's surface against the player.

One weapon the player may deploy is the commando, who will hang off the bottom of the player's craft shooting at enemies, or drop to the surface to pick up humans, mutants or weapons for the player. Many commandos can be in play at once.

So I think I'm going to grab all these elements (borrow) and put them into the game. The game is going to be about making a space shooter fun and strategic.


Another element I want to add is depicted here, the drop ship manoeuvre.

It's like the reverse of Choplifter. You pickup troopers from your base, fly into a hot zone, drop off the troopers who go onto to attack a cocoon, which releases humans. If there are troops captured in here (all collected by harvesters - below) they can go on to join the attack force. You can pick up these troops at any time.

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