BOSS RUSH HOUR (BRH)

Concept Statement

In Boss Rush Hour, the player emerges out a giant test tube where they will immediately be thrust into a series of fights against increasingly difficult bosses, with each fight taking place immediately after the previous one in the same arena with notable changes. The bosses will use complex attack patterns that the player will be required to learn and master to progress.

Concept Creation Process

The Idea for my game came from a unique source, a mod for StarCraft 2. In this mod, you would select one of a few characters with unique abilities and fight against a variety of bosses. The boss fights played out somewhat similar to MMO’s boss fights with the player running around avoiding the bosses’ attacks while slowly chipping away at the bosses' health. It was a simple game but it was a nice time waster, something you could play if you only had a short break. I thought that the concept was so simple that I could probably make it myself if I wanted to, so I had always kept it in the back of my mind.

I have played other games with similar concepts since then like “Furi”, “Eldest Souls” and “Titan Souls” which are all games where the game predominantly focuses on boss fights with minimal actions to do outside of the boss fights themselves. These games typically have a high focus on refined and fun gameplay. Typically, you would have briefly travel between fights which would take no more than a couple of minutes. I would like to replicate this in BRH but to reduce the traveling between fights even more to the point where it will mostly be quick and automatic.

I decided to go with a Sci-fi art style due to the simplistic nature of designing robotic enemies and metallic environments should help me more easily draw the art in the timeframe I have. Titan Soul’s somewhat simplistic pixel art has been an inspiration for how I plan to do my own art, however, Titan Souls also uses a sort of 3D style for some of its more elaborate bosses which I do not plan to replicate.
I would like to make the world mostly appear kind of like Rain World, a game with mostly muted colours with lots of darker areas, but I want to make it so most dangerous enemy attacks in bright, somewhat garish colours to signify their importance from the rest of the world as well the added bonus of better attack readability.

I’ve never enjoyed when a game “wastes” a player’s time with completely unnecessary gameplay segments merely to extend play time, I want to design the game in a way where every encounter and action smoothly flows into another.

Audience and Competitive Analysis

BRH will be a somewhat difficult game but not necessarily to the point where it the audience would be only “hardcore” players. It is for people who enjoy challenging their skills and learning mechanics that allow them to beat each encounter. People who play games such as “Furi”, “Eldest Souls” and “Titan Souls” would feel most at home in this game but people who have played games such as “Binding of Isaac”, “Dark Souls”, “Hyper Light Drifter” or “Hades” may also enjoy this game as well.

It is worthy of note that this game will be mostly if not entirely drawn by hand by me, so if someone is overly picky about art fidelity, they may find my game to be somewhat lacking in that respect.

Genre

BRH will be a top-down/bird’s eye-view action game. This allows for vertical and horizontal movement, which allows complex attack pattern’s by the game’s bosses which the player would require fast reflexes or good memory of attack patterns to dodge. Action games facilitate fast and reactive gameplay. Which suits the intentionally difficult and fast-paced idea that I am aiming for.

Game Treatment

In Boss Rush Hour, you play as a test subject who suddenly breaks/falls out of a test tube, finding themselves confused and alone in a giant metal facility. The sound alarms will roar and you will find yourself met with challenging obstacles.

You find that you have powers that allow you to shoot powerful projectiles out of your hands and make you quick on your feet. You can run and dodge around the arena with great speed, allowing you to deftly dodge any attacks that come your way while also dishing out the pain.

You will fight a variety of powerful and dangerous bosses, each with their own unique mechanics such as the Breach Containment Responder, a giant machine with rockets, laser, and tesla coils, or the Storm Control Units, a specialized army of lightning-infused robots, ready to lay down waves of lightning.

A selection of difficulty choices allows you either tone down the challenge for a more comfortable experience or crank things all the way up to eleven, making it so you will have to learn to fight to even attempt to succeed, there’s something here for most skill levels.

Key Features:

• Multiple Boss fights – Difficult boss fights that the player will learn and master.
• Tight and responsive controls – Every action the player does should be responsive and feel deliberate, there should rarely be a moment where the player does not feel like they are in control.
• Straightforward progression – There aren’t any frivolous activities for the player to do, it is simply boss fight after boss fight.
• Clean and simple art – The art complements the gameplay, sharp, clean visuals allow the player to easily differentiate the background, enemies, and attacks from each other.
• Short and Sweet – BRH will not waste the player's time, every boss fight lasts now more than a handful of minutes and flows smoothly into the next in a way that feels entertaining and compelling.

Concept Art

I know I am not the best artist but I hope this gets across my ideas for the first few bosses and how I plan to design each encounter as I make the game. The following are mock-ups by me to plan out general enemy shapes, arena shapes, and the actions that can happen.

Below are some attempts to put enemy design into practice in an unfinished pixel art style, so far it has come out more cartoonish than I would have originally liked.

The following are a few examples of art by other studios which I admire and would like to replicate the general feel and look of

Rain World - https://rainworldgame.com/

Reference List:

The Game Bakers, Furi, 2016, PC, The Game Bakers
Devolver Digital, Titan Souls, 2015, PC, Acid Nerve
United Label, CI Games, Eldest Souls, 2021, PC, Fallen Flag Studio
Akupara Games, Rain World, 2017, PC, Videocult
FromSoftware, Dark Souls, 2011, PC, FromSoftware
Supergiant Games, Hades, 2020, PC, Supergiant Games
Heart Machine, Hyper Light Drifter, 2016, PC, Heart Machine
Square Enix, Final Fantasy 7, 1997. PC, Square Enix