I've played a lot of Overwatch and it's given me inspiration for my own hero shooter I hope to make in the future. The concept started with Overwatch as a baseline, but has diverted as I put more thought into it. I'll post more in-depth stuff about individual characters later, but here's the basic gist of the overall design.
Style
As mentioned, the game is anime-inspired. A major point of inspiration was BlazBlue, with its highly colorful and stylized art style, detailed designs, and distinctive characters models across the board. I've never seen something in an anime style done in an FPS before. I assume that's because FPS games aren't as popular in Japan and the anime style isn't as popular with western developers. Well, I'm looking to bridge the gap so to speak.
Gameplay
All the style in the world doesn't matter if the gameplay is bad, or overly derivative. As I said, the game started based off of Overwatch but my idea has several notable changes to the formula. Specifically, it includes mechanics inspired by fighting games. What I mean by that there are two meters one must manage, and it's important to do so. They are:
- Excel - The gauge that builds up to your Ultimate. Like Overwatch, this is a limit break that does something beneficial to the team (either a powerful attack or a useful tool). However, there are certain point in the meter where one can combine this with a regular ability to enhance it. Like for example, spending some of the Excel meter to increase the damage of an attack-based ability, or increase the speed/duration of a movement-based ability.
- X-Factor - This is a super mode that increases damage and auto-regenerates health once built up to. The catch is that when used, it can never be used again for the duration of the match, which makes timing it just right important.
Besides that, the game as mentioned is a hero shooter. There's a wide variety of different characters, each with a distinct style of gameplay, personality and backstory. All characters are made to be unique, as a hero shooter should.
Other Details
While I won't go into details about the characters and world just yet, I'll give you some info to give you an idea. The game takes place in a constructed world where science and magic exists in equal measure, and is practically a "fantasy kitchen sink" in this regard. The ideas I've came up with so far includes normal humans, two different vampires, a cat girl, robot girls, a robot powered by magic, a cyborg, a lizardman, a panda martial arts master, a magical girl accompanied by a fey, a ninja, a wizard, an undead cowboy, and an elf just for starters.
I want each character to be diverse. Overwatch has the help of different nationalities, but since it's harder to get an exact equivalent here, I diversified through character types.
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So, what do you guys think?