Current State

Hey there, this is Szyu. Since this is my first game I am uploading into the abyss of the internet, I want to take the chance to introduce myself a little :) I'm a 31 years old Software Engineer solo developing with Unity. I fiddled with Unity for more than a decade now, trying stuff I though was interesing and challenging to implement. But at some point I figured I should go for it for real and make my first game. With a clear vision in mind and my software background, I created the concepts for "Neon Barrage" (working title - maybe the final title as well :D). since this is the first game or game project that I am showing online, please bear with me as I won't have fancy descriptions or texts to show. But hey, everyone started at one point, right?

Core gameplay:

The core mechanic of this game is navigating your Paddle, that consists of multiple blocks, by moving and rotating. Enemy turets spawn in waves at the edge of the arena and shoot in a predetermined pattern. Each turret has their own pattern. You have to navigate around the projectiles shot from the turrets. Power Ups help you get through the waves. Picking up and activating Power Ups is done separately to give you more control and the ability to strategically use their functions to survive. If your paddle gets hit by a projectile, the hit block will be destroyed, leaving your paddle smaller with fewer blocks. If a block in the middle is destroyed, your paddle will be split into two paddles that will be controlled individually. Though they move in the same direction, they will rotate around their own axis. But when two paddle blocks collide with each other, they will be stitched together.

Lose condition:

You lose if your last paddle is wholly destroyed, giving you the option to post your results into a global leaderboard before trying again.

Win condition:

There is not real win condition. Just try to survive as long as possible while the waves get harder and harder.

Current features:

• Paddle Navigation (Moving and rotating)
• Support for Keyboard and Gamepad
• 3 types of turrets:
  • Gun turret: Shoots a small bullet straight to the other side, without aim
  • Cannon turret: Shoots a big, slower bullet straight to the other side, without aim
  • Precision turret: Shoots a small, faster bullet while aiming at the player
• 4 types of Power Ups:
  • Shield: Makes all paddles invincible for a few seconds
  • Block spawn: Makes a single block spawn at a random position, allowing the player to stitch it to one of his paddles by colliding with the block
  • Slow down: Slows down time for enemies and projectile, while giving the player the ability to controll the paddles with almost normal speed
  • Stun: Stuns all enemy turrets, halting them from what they are doing for some seconds. (This can be used to block some spawn slots for the next wave)
• Paddle split on hit
• Stitching paddles together (or blocks)

Planned features:

• More turrets:
• Barrage turret: Shoots multiple medium sized bullets at once in multiple directions (i.e., -45°, 0°, 45°)
• Mortar turret: Selects a location inside the arena symbolized by a shadow, dropping the bullet there
  
• Artillery turret: Same as Mortar, but bigger projectile and faster drop
  
• Cluster turret: Same as Mortar with a smaller projectile, but multiple projectiles at once
• Laser turret: Shoots a laser covering the whole row or column with a small beam width
• Missile launcher: Shoots a homing missile that follows the player for a short amount of time
• EMP turret: Shoots a projectile in a random direction. When the projectile is destroyed (by colliding with other projectiles or a paddle), it renders paddles inside a big area uncontrollable for a short time
• All turrets will get variants. A variant is displayed with another color and has the same projectile profile, but will fire multiple shots before retreating again and/or have a faster fire rate.
• More Power Ups:
  • Magnet: Creates a force field around all paddle for a short time, adding a small force to nearby bullets
  • Deflector: Deflects bullets for a short time, causing them to bounce off (not working for missiles)
  • Speed up: Increases the movement and rotation speed of all paddles for a few seconds
  • New Wave: Instantly call a new wave. All current turrets stop in their actions and begin to retreat (even if they have not shot yet)
  • New Power Up: Instantly spawns a new Power Up
  • Copycat: Copys all current paddles and spawns them at random locations. They are instantly owned by the player
  • EMP Burst: Destroys all nearby projectiles in an area (EMP projectiles still activate their effect)
• Global leaderboard
• Adding animations for UI and game elements
• Make the paddles' controls smoother
• Polishing
• Make better graphics / sprites

Ideas:

• Give each block a HP pool so that they need more than one hit to be destroyed. This could be paired with turrets dealing different amount of damage and a Power Up to restore HP.
• The original idea was creating a bullet hell  evasion game with a mix of pong. So an idea was to integrate the ability to spawn player projectiles (balls) that bounce off the arena walls, destroying projectiles and/or enemy turrets. The player can alter the balls trajectory path by letting the ball bounce off paddles. With this, a Power Up to spawn a new ball would be a possibility.

Demo Video:

Let me know what you think of this game concept, the planned features or ideas. This will be a game made by a gamer for gamers, so it should be fun to play for as many people as possible!