Notes on: Gameplay

So basically you're making your way through these caverns (I suggest we use physics to our advantage in level design- make lots of physical puzzles to overcome. Zombie piles, ramps, bridges, and barricades are good examples).
The different parts of the Necrocarriage you command do different things. They, along with your own character, are the agents with which you act upon the world. The different parts so far are:

Chassis (with wheels) - Allows you to move your cannon around, and protects you from the dangers of the Deep.

Machine Gun Nests (left and right) - Keep zombies off your back (as long as they can see them in the lamp or spotlight).

Lamp- Provides a radius of light around your carriage (so that machine gunners and you can see).

Spotlight - Is movable and provides a focused beam of light in one direction (this is how you control your gunners, basically- by directing their attention. They'll fire at the closest zombie they see automatically and constantly).

Plow - Movable and used to interact with the objects in the world (push 'em out of your way).

Vacuum - Used to pick up fuel for the cannon.

[Here is the first point of contention.]

Cannon - shoots dead bits from the ceilings.

Fuel tank - Could either be used to store:

"Liquid fuel" from vacuuming dead bodies- kind of like "energy," you can spend it to fire your cannon (maybe to move around as well?). Neither Tom nor I know how to make this work.

OR:

"Icons" from vacuuming up specific body parts (or powerups)- The idea is that we have a whole shitload of single body parts (arms, legs, heads, and bodies) stuck up in the rafters, along with a few goodies ("treasure," meaning powerups, money, and "keys"). You use your cannon (loaded with a certain body part (or powerup), which shows up in the fuel tank as an icon representing it) to dislodge parts from the ceilings. Similar parts, matched up together with the cannon shot, explode (perhaps the more the parts next to one another, the bigger the dislodgement?), showering you with body parts.
Unfortunately, when you get enough body parts on the ground together, you get a zombie (which reanimates (and turns into an animated sprite))!

Your goal is to fend off zombies and solve physical puzzles while collecting powerups to help you "clean" better, money to purchase new parts with, and the all-important "keys," items which unlock a new part of the level you progress through on the way to the BOSS SHOWDOWN (which is another physical puzzle)!

BUT you have a narrative goal as well- see Notes on: Story.


Other random ideas:

Keys should have to be retrieved by hand, as should refugees/wounded. Having to set defense up and then quickly exit your carriage should be a key gameplay point.
You are vulnerable when outside your carriage.

"Keys" are things like parts for an elevator, trinkets long lost and desired by gatekeepers, an elderly explosives expert (who can help you through that wall!), etc. I don't think we should use actual keys.

The level design- TOM: What do you think about making full color objects and such for the levels, and then making the environments just be simpler profile lines? All the environmental objects could still be there, but the physical ones (like tumbling boulders or rickety bridges) could be stark shapes. It'll emphasize the dynamic lighting (which is an important gameplay element), probably (?) make levels smaller in byte-size, heh, and also make levels a bunch less of a hassle to actually make.

When zombies are accidentally used as cannon ammo, all the parts they dislodge turn into zombies(?) What? Does that make sense?

So far my ideas for levels are: Upper crypt level (lots of vaulted, square spaces filled with bodies), Garbage tunnels (caverns which end with the Intestine Dragaeon), Guts level (where you're traveling down the bowels of the Dragaeon- there HAVE TO BE UNDULATING INTESTINE-CAVES, and an underwater level (Dragaeon poops you into the sewers, where you have to swim as a submarine through zombie-infested waters).
Other ideas: Mushroom-cave gnome-zombie-fightin' level, Fight with a Golem, a refugee camp infected with zombie-plague.

Citizens should look like zombie hobo desert bandits. Some combination of those things.

Are we going to just call 'em zombies? I'm down with that, but let me know if you guys have ideas for the setting, story, maybe characters, stuff. Things.