This is the devlog for the game Pizzocalypse.  Please refer to the homepage for previous devlog posts. The Game is currently in production and is being developed as a part of the Gamer2Maker Game Design and Production mentorship program under the guidance of mentor Rahul Sehgal. 

Pizzocalypse is a 2.5D top down mobile shooting game where a badass delivery guy  has vowed to deliver the pizza to the doorstep of every hungry survivor during a zombie apocalypse. 

The game is currently in production and is being developed as a part of the Gamer2Maker Game Design and Production mentorship program under the guidance of mentor Rahul Sehgal. The post records the work during the period of August 1st, 2023- September 1st, 2023. 

This month was spent working on the following things - 

Weapons Balancing

The game features the choice to play with three weapons Namely, Pistol, Shotgun, assault rifle. To offer a variable gameplay with each choice, we decided to balance the weapons in a such way that each gun will have an advantage over another. 

Pistols - Better accuracy, shotgun -Larger area of damage, assault rifle - better speed. 

Tutorial Level Design

For Tutorial level design, we looked at various different games such as Half-Life, Mega Man and Portal 2 etc. We decided to use the tutorial level of Far Cry 3: ‘Blood Dragon as a reference for its over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek reference, which was similar to the tone we were going for.  We decided to restrict ourselves from breaking the fourth wall, as it would be a really fine line between being funny and cringy. 

Our tutorial level would be staged as the player character’s first day on the job. His manager would talk down to him on call like he is an unpaid intern, teaching him basics such as running and essentials such as the limited nature of ammos in a patronizing tone. 

The tutorial level would include pop-up dialogue boxes featuring instructions from the manager and would teach the player the following things: 

Game Screen UI

The Game Screen UI would include a Pizza Hotness bar which would act as a timer {Pizza going from hot to cold} a separate button to activate power up/ ability, an ammo counter, a character health bar apart from two joysticks {left for player movement and right for aiming and shooting}.

The Pizza Health bar UI design was inspired by the speedometer UI from NFS: Most Wanted, with the Hotness meter appearing in a curve like the Nitro boost in Most Wanted.  

There was a discussion about adding a customer mood meter but it was dropped because it was too complicated and unclear. 

During a meeting with mentors, the discussion about the Pizza hotness bar led to the idea of replacing the character health with pizza health and making the player character invincible. So it's not the player character’s life we’ll be worried about, instead we’ll be worried about whether the pizza is intact or ruined. Plus, we could extract some comedy out of this invincible guy who works as a pizza delivery guy. {The reference of ‘One Punch Man’ was discussed for humor}

Settings UI

The settings UI would include a pizza slice as a slider to control the various settings. The look of the settings menu would emulate a restaurant menu. 

Power-ups/Abilities/Intrer-actables 

The player character would have the choice to equip one ability per level before starting the level. The player will come across the chosen ability as a pickup while traversing the level. The choices of abilities would be as follows - 

Non-Damaging Power-Ups

1. Gun Switching (ability to switch to a different gun for a limited time)
2. No Reload - {Unlimited Ammo For Limited Time}
3. Stun Grenade (stuns zombies for limited time on impact)

Damaging Power-Ups

1. Mine-Traps {trip mines which explode when triggered by zombies walking near it}
2. Coke-Mint Bomb {Looks like a molotov, acts like a grenade - damages zombies on impact}

Interactive Environmental Elements 

(The player would come across these elements while traversing the level and can use them to their advantage when stuck in tricky/dangerous situations)

1. Petrol Drum {Explodes when shot, causing damage to anyone who is nearby, zombies and player.} 
2. Venting Through Gutter  (The player goes into a gutter and emerges from another gutter. 10-second delay between each use.) This power-up was named after the venting ability from Among Us, another reference used was a similar mechanic from Hitman GO. 

The team would go on to discuss the utility and presence of several abilities -  one of them was - Does the ‘venting through gutters’ fit in with the tactical element of the game? Should it be a power-up or an interactive environmental element? 

Project Mentors also pointed out to us that if we keep venting as a power-up, it might give players an undue advantage and to balance it they suggested adding ‘collectible cash drops after a zombie kill’ - so if the player chooses to vent then they might lose out on the cash drops. The team considered this solution as a possibility. Another possible solution suggested was - making one of the vents a booby trap. This didn't make sense to the team. That was because players would feel frustrated if they incurred damage while venting, {when they chose to vent in the first place specifically to avoid damage}. 

We decided to keep venting as an environmental interactive mechanic after much discussion.

Another query was - Should we add ‘gun switch’ as a regular mechanic, as most shooters do {switching between primary and secondary weapons as and when players want it}? Even the mentors raised the same question. 

The team discussed that keeping the gun switch as a power-up for a limited time would be an added challenge for the players, as they’ll have to strategize when they want to activate the power-up and which gun they want to switch to. One of the concerns was if the players would get frustrated while starting a level again in order to choose the gun switch power-up. The conclusion of the discussion was that the level durations are short enough that it wouldn’t be frustrating. 

This concludes the current devlog post for Pizzocalypse. Stay tuned for more!