Paul & Fred Discuss – Survival horror shooters
Me and my friend Paul were talking over Gizmo tonight and he told me about a game called Shadowgrounds Survivor. A top down action shooter where you have to kill hordes of aliens. In sort of an “Improvements on your game” topic, we set about making up what kind of action survival shooter we would like to play. I’ve expanded on
The game is a four player game where each player chooses one of the four characters (no two players can pick the same):
Exterminator: Carries a flame thrower and can see the area map. Good against swarms.
Soldier: Carries a machine gun and has the compass pointing to important locations Good against fast moving enemies.
Rocket man: Carries a rocket launcher and can see the motion tracker. Good against armored enemies.
Technician: Can place mines and carries a pistol, also operates machinery and opens doors. Can use night vision to see into dark places.
As you may have noticed, the special sight of each unit is the least useful. The motion tracker would be best given to the Soldier as fast moving enemies coming in from a distance would be best for him to know about. Most armored enemies are very obvious. Swarm enemies hide in the shadows so the Exterminator would be best given the night vision.
The reason for all this switcharoo is simple: Teamwork! Players must use voice chat to relay the important information to each other.
Now, to add something new to bashing aliens up the games greatest problem rears it’s head, instead of playing through the game from beginning to end, players start at the beginning and must try and get as far as possible before the aliens eventually kill them. No saves and you get one load of ammo at the beginning of the game and have to try as hard as possible not to use your weapons where you don’t have to.
On a somewhat related note: Players regenerate health relatively fast, this makes it easier to focus on puzzles and conserving ammo. Should any one player die the game slowly fades to black for the other players.
Well thats just some ideas. A name and more ideas to come.
