Details:
– Position: Artist / Designer
– Platform: Windows
– Prototype Created: October 2013
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Responsibilities:
- • Matched the 2D art style of Space Invaders while also creating some art nuances
- • Led the design of gameplay mechanic innovations but made sure to keep the core gameplay of the retro games intact
Space Invaders? mashes the retro games Space Invaders and Missile Command together, but also adds a shield mechanic to raise the level of complexity. The player is tasked to protect their cities from the alien invaders, and the player can use the shield as a barrier to intercept incoming bombs from destroying their cities. The shield then acts as an offensive weapon if three bombs are caught in the correct places on the shield. We also wanted to create an ethical message within the game as well, so we decided that the only way the player will be able to win the game is if they don’t shoot the aliens at all. In turn, the aliens won’t fire at the player unless the player fires first. This was implemented to paint a picture about how instinctive humans are using violence rather than diplomacy. As an added bonus, if the player doesn’t fire upon the aliens and lets them fall to the bottom of the screen, the player receives a considerable amount of points and is presented with an image of an alien tentacle and a human hand shaking in peace. Space Invaders? was developed in four weeks as a prototype using HTML 5.