Comet
Comet
Role: Producer / Designer / 3D Modeler
Team: Don Holden, Chelsea Howe, Ben Humberston, Joyce Lee, Matt Whaley
Download: http://comet.manojalpa.net
Dev Summary: A complete PC game created with XNA over four months in Fall 2008
Concept: 2D Arcade “sphere shooter” balances life, offense, and defense – all controlled by the same resource. A technological menace has infested the universe. Mechanical spores, connected by an advanced neural network, travel from planet to planet absorbing and destroying crystal resources with their fog of parasitic nanoparticles. A single galaxy remains resilient, the home of a lone defender manifested from the cosmic plasma. Coma, a sentient comet guarded and fueled by the life force of the galaxy, must travel out across the branching arms of the spiral, eliminating the spores and restoring the crystals without being destroyed the toxic fog.
Design Notes: Because so much of Comet was generated based on algorithms and variables, tweaking the difficulty and finding new ways to challenge players was both quick and fun. Eight different types of challenge were ultimately chosen based on a single or set of variable changes. For example – one branch of the spiral galaxy focused on friction based challenge, one on terrain, one on quantity of spores and one on density. Players could choose which challenge they wanted when, and face more difficult challenges once they’d gained more experience.