About our Game
Description
Robros is a robot-themed, action-strategy shooter where you control two robots to get them to fight their way out of a factory filled with rogue robots. The gameplay is split in two phases: planning and action. The first phase is planning your escape by plotting a vector path on a 2D map. Due to your power supply being damaged, you have to make a path while picking up spare batteries along the way. Once you make a path that makes it to the exit, you switch to the 3D Action phase and protect your robot companion who provides you energy as you both fight your way through the corridors. Plan your path, protect your charge. Key Features
Platform
This game will be released as a free-to-play title on Steam for Windows via Steam Greenlight Development Tools
Premise
Two service robots, B.U.R.T. (Battery Utility Robot Transporter) and I.R.N-E (Industrial Repair Net-Engineer), work together at a high-tech assembly factory for combat drones. Suddenly, a virus spreads through the entire facility, causing the entire production line to go rogue and wreak havoc. Copyright
This game features assets legally obtained or purchased from various sources. All assets are under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Environmental Models (Purchased from Unity Store) SFX & BGM
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Background
This game was developed as our thesis project for our Master's degree in Entertainment Arts & Engineering here at the University of Utah. It is the culmination of all of our skills and experience to develop a game which, at its core, addresses and solves a particular problem. We developed this game as an attempt to make classic arcade rail shooters relevant to the mainstream gaming market again as well as a way to make the common shooter game more tactical and strategic. The initial concept started with a simple idea of planning your movements on a 2D map before playing in real time in 3D. The game started as a spy-themed, turn-based, strategy-focused action shooter in which you planned your path on a 2D map and tried to adapt to the movement of enemies around you. In realtime 3D, you shot at enemies with stop-and-go movement in accordance to how you planned your path on the 2D Map. On our next iteration, the spy theme and third-person gameplay were scrapped to stay more true to the rail shooting gameplay that inspired us in the first place. However, we stuck to the 2D Map planning concept which fundamentally made our game innovative. We then took inspiration from IGF Winners Frozen Synapse and Superhot to conceive our next innovation. For our next prototype, we developed a FPS-shooter in which you plotted your path on the 2D Map, picking up batteries and ammo along the way and then fired at enemies as you went down the rails. The tagline for this project was lay down your rails before you grab your gun.
After a long summer in which we our team had to discuss endless directions for our game, we eventually came to the conclusion that in order for our players to be more proactive while playing we had to include one of the fundamental FPS mechanics by allowing the player the move freely in 3D. However, we built on this idea by adopting the escort mechanic of the Payload game mode of Team Fortress 2. With this new element, we created two main characters for the player to control. Now we've given ourselves the challenge to create gameplay and challenges dependent on the dynamic relationship between duo protagonists.
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