Revenge of the Duzzles is a top-down 2D shooter where the main character is a maid who finds herself being attacked by magical dust balls (duzzles) out for revenge. Armed with a feather duster and spray cleaner, she struggles to defend herself before they can cause her death due to violent allergies.
The duzzles all float at her from various directions and she can shoot them with the spray bottle (narrow, long-range stream or wide, short-range spray) to destroy them or swing her feather duster around her to deflect them.
The only catch is that the duzzles can also break apart and recombine into larger or smaller duzzles. The patterns of their breaking apart and recombining will depend on their color.
Fast-paced, frantic, cutesy, playful
Clear the screen of duzzles and then defeat the final boss
Top down shooters, also known as ‘shmups’, are one of the oldest video game genres, extending back to Space Invaders. We expect the audience of Revenge of the Duzzles to be existing ‘shmup’ fans, which are primarily males from 18-35.
The player will have a top-down view of the world.
The player is always facing up. While she can move all over the screen, she can only shoot directly ahead of her. She will have to use her shield to avoid being hit by duzzles from other directions and move the duzzles to parts of the screen where they can be hit with her spray bottle.
The player fires with a "spray bottle". The spray bottle has two modes of fire: straight stream and wide spray. Projectiles from the spray bottle will all have the same amount of power. Whether spray or stream is used will only determine the range and behavior of the projectile. Players can hold down the button for continuous fire. Projectiles will not bounce off the sides of the screen the way the duzzles will.
This firing mode will shoot two streams of bullets from either side of the player—one stream per spray bottle. These bullets have a range that extends from the player to the edge of the screen. This firing mode has a faster rate of fire than spray mode but only two bullets are fired at a time and only straight ahead.
This firing mode will shoot two sprays of bullets from either side of the player (one stream per spray bottle). Each spray is made up of three bullets meaning that each time the player fires, a total of six bullets are emitted. These bullets are fired in arcs that emit diagonally away from the player sprite’s upper left and right corners. The area between the two streams is approximately the areas protected by the feather duster. In contrast to the stream mode, these bullets will fire at a slower rate and have a short range. The bullets will fade after a set period of time.
The feather duster acts as a shield around the player. It will protect a certain amount of space around the player, and it can be moved around the player to deflect duzzles from any direction. When a duzzle runs into the shield, it will bounce off the shield and move in a different direction. The shield can be swung around the player.
Coming too close to a duzzle without it touching her will only tickle her allergies. It will allow her to charge up a sneeze shot which acts as a bomb and can clear sections of the screen.
The gauge for the sneeze bombs increases based on the amount of time Lisette spends grazing. Upon topping off the gauge, the player will receive one sneeze bomb which they can save or use at their discretion. The player can only have a maximum of 5 bombs. Once they have reached that amount, the gauge will no longer go up until they use one of their bombs.
When the sneeze bomb is triggered, it will emit a destructive cloud radially from the player's location. How much damage duzzles caught in the cloud take depends on how close they are to the sneeze's center.
A single direct hit from a duzzle will cause the death of the maid. Luckily for her, they will have to hit her right in the face to cause this to occur (she has a smaller collision box than her graphic).
Player death is caused by collisions between the player's face and a duzzle. Any such collision will cause the player's death. When the player is killed, they will lose 1 life. If the player has no lives remaining, they will be taken to the
game over screen. Otherwise they will
respawn.
When the player is respawning, the game play is paused, freezing all duzzles on the screen. The duster will return to the player's starting position and the player will fly in from the bottom of the screen to the duster. Once the player has reached the duster, gameplay will resume.
During spawning and for one second afterward, the player will be invulnerable to damage.
Details about the color specific behavior can be found in the table at the end of this section.
When a duzzle reaches a certain size (
critical mass), the duzzles will break apart into smaller duzzles to create more enemies. In this way, they are creating "bullets" comprised of smaller duzzles. Depending on the color, the duzzle may need to travel along a specific path before it divides. When the duzzle divides, the original duzzle (if any; the parent duzzle) will continue along its original vector while the fired duzzles (children) will shoot off into their specified directions.
Duzzles will divide whenever they reach a critical mass. This critical mass is the minimum size that the duzzle needs to be to divide. Mass is expressed in the number of size 1 duzzles that a duzzle is built from.
The critical mass varies slightly depending on the color of the duzzle. It is calculated based on the number of child duzzles the duzzle will launch when it divides, and the required size of the parent duzzle that should be left.
When a duzzle reaches critical mass, it will begin to “dance”. This is a visual warning that the duzzle is preparing to divide for the player. The dance will be manifested as an animation of the duzzles’ eye sprites. Additionally, the duzzle's color will oscillate between its
active color and its
inactive color. While dancing, the duzzles can still take damage. If they take enough damage to reduce the mass below critical mass before the dancing is complete, the duzzle will not divide.
After breaking apart, the child duzzles will need to bounce of shield or sides of the screen (walls) before they can recombine. If they are not capable of recombining, they will pass through each other. If a duzzle is not in a combinable state, it will be be its
inactive color. Otherwise, it will be its
active color.
The duzzle's color will determine its behavior. The diffrent colors each communicate different things to the player. Hue (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) is an indication of the behavior and spawn patters. Tone (pale, dark, bright) also communicates different things.
The duzzle will be its inactive color when it is incapable of colliding. This color will be paler than the
active color. Duzzles that are emitted after dividing are always the inactive color.
The duzzle is its active color when its capable of combining. The active color is brighter than the
inactive color.
The duzzle turns its damaged color when it is taking damage. The damaged color is darker than the
active and
inactive colors. It should remain its damaged color just long enough that it doesn't flicker between hits from bullets in the
stream mode
Enemies will spawn in a scripted pattern. The player will have to defeat all the duzzles in the level to clear the way for a giant duzzle which will act as a boss.
Duzzles will spawn in "waves" of duzzles. After a wave spawns, depending on that wave's complexity and size, the player will have time before the next wave to work on clearing the previous wave. This will prevent the screen from becoming overwhelmed with duzzles and give the player a brief moment of rest so they are not constantly tense.
The boss character will be a huge duzzle composed of a very large number of duzzles. This duzzle will be capable of larger and more difficult attacks than previous 'large' duzzles but will otherwise behave in a similar fashion.
The boss duzzle is encountered in its own level. The level begins with the boss in the center. The first few seconds of the level show many duzzles of size 1 spawning from the upper half of the screen and firing into the boss duzzle to combine with it. This shows how the boss is made of several duzzles.
The boss duzzle cannot be affected by the feather duster. The player will be notified of this at the beginning of the boss level. The duzzles spawned by the boss behave as normal.
The boss will cycle through all the colors spawning continuously as it goes. The transition from one color to the next is based on the critical mass of the boss duzzle. The boss loses mass from the player's fire and from its steady emissions of child duzzles.
The boss duzzle will spawn the same as normal duzzles of that color with the exception of purple which will fire in the direction of the player as opposed to the reverse of the parent duzzle's direction. The last color cycled by the boss duzzle is orange because the orange duzzle does not leave a parent duzzle after division. Therefore, the final stage of the boss duzzle is to turn orange and slowly descend toward the bottom of the screen where it will explode into many tiny duzzles (if it can reach the bottom before being destroyed)
The boss duzzle moves very slowly.
The player will get a set number of points for every duzzle destroyed. Smaller duzzles are worth more than larger duzzles. The player will also be awarded a bonus points for sneeze bombs they have not used.
After surviving, attaining a high score is the player’s secondary objective.
Each level will take 1-3 minutes to complete.
The game will be fun! There will be a focus on pattern recognition and repetition, and the success completion of a level will be rewarding to a player who has struggled to finish it. The humorous style of the game will also lend to the level of fun, as it will keep players engaged and interested in seeing the conclusion. Players will gain increased satisfaction by the desire to continuously defeat high scores. Additionally, they will be rewarded for success more than punished for failure. This will increase player satisfaction and encourage players to play continuously after beating the game.
Ridiculous version of the real world with magical feather dusters, super cleaning spray, and super military dust experiments. Lisette flies above the clouds and sees a variety of terrain below the clouds. As she flies, the terrain zips by way below her.
The duzzles are a secret military experiment—a super dust intended to be dropped on enemy soldiers to immobilize them with intense sneezing fits. Their abilities to break apart and reform allowed them to escape from the government lab where they were created. Now they seek vengeance on the world who treated them as mere vacuum fodder.
The government tried a myriad of techniques to stop them but soon realized that only someone who had devoted their lives to dust elimination would have the sheer tenacity to eliminate the duzzles. They contacted Lisette, the Super Maid, to help them. Only Lisette, with her intimate knowledge of dust and her tried and true dust destroying techniques, can wield the specially-made feather duster and spray bottle to eliminate the dust trying to destroy the world.
Ever since she was a child, Lisette has had an extreme allergy to dust. It often limited her ability to play with the other children who enjoyed hiding under beds and poking around other dusty places; she always lost hide and seek. Her frustration manifested itself in an extreme hatred of dust and a determination to rid the world of dust so that no one would ever be left out the way she was. Over the years, she developed a reputation for being an unstoppable dust destroying machine earning her the nickname Super Maid. Lisette has an extreme allergy to dust so being hit by the duzzles will kill her.
Originally created by the government as a super weapon, duzzles achieved sentience and they are pissed!! Being comprised of dust and possessing all the motives that one would expect of angry dust balls, they are out for revenge. Tired of being forced to hide under beds, being swept under rugs, and being shunned they long to take revenge on a world that shunned them.
Players will see their score accumulate. Tracking score will give players a secondary objective in addition to simple survival. This will keep our game interesting to players for a longer period.
The sneeze gauge is located next to the playfield and the
accumulated sneezes on the HUD. It will fill based on the amount of time the player spends grazing the duzzles. Once it fills, the player will acquire a sneeze and the gauge will drop back down. If the gauge was raised higher than the amount needed to acquire a bomb by a small amount, the player will keep the overflow when it resets.
This meter is next to the
sneeze gauge. It will show an icon for each sneeze the player has acquired. The meter starts with one sneeze in it. Each sneeze is represented by the sneeze icon which is a box of tissues.
The meter only holds 5 sneezes. Once its full, the player will not be able to gain any more and the sneeze gauge will not go up until a sneeze is used.
This is a visual display of how many lives the player has remaining. This shows up to six lives.
In the demo, the player may have more lives than visible. It will only start removing lives visually when the player has dropped below 6.
For testing purposes, the demo also has the following controls: P - level up instantly, I - player invincibility, F3 - Debug info
The default controller is the XBOX 360 gamepad.
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- A - confirm
- B - back/cancel
- Start - pause
- Back - back/cancel
- D-Pad - navigation on the menu
- Left trigger - sneeze bomb
- Right trigger - Fire spray bottle (hold for continuous fire)
- Right bumper - change firing mode
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PC controls with the mouse and keyboard are available for players who don't have an available controller.
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- Enter - confirm
- Escape - back/cancel, pause
- Arrows - navigation on the menu
- Left control - sneeze bomb
- Space - Fire spray bottle (hold for continuous fire)
- T - change firing mode
- WASD - player movement
- mouse - duster movement.
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This screen is the screen viewed during gameplay. It is comprised of the playfield on the left and the
HUD on the right.
The level complete screen is shown whenever the player completes a level. It will show a congratulatory message and the final
score from that level. The level complete screen features the
pseudo continue button.
The pseudo continue button is an image displaying the text "Continue" styled like a selected menu item. Although it cannot actually be selected like a menu item, it will serve as a visual indicator to the player that pressing the confirm button they would use on a menu screen.
Upon leaving the level complete screen, the player will return to the gameplay screen in the next level. Unless they have completed the last level in which case they will proceed to the credits screen.
The credits screen can be accessed from the
main menu. It can also be reached after the final
level complete screen. It will show the credits for the game.
The credits will read:
The Girls and Ey
Heather Arbiter
- Lead Designer
- Producer
- Documentation
- Systems Programmer
- Level Spawn Patterns
- Balance & Difficulty Design
- General Programmer
Kelley Piering
- Lead Artist
- Art assets
- Flash prototype
- Level Maps
- General Programmer
- Game Designer
- Interface Designer
Sela Davis
- Lead Sound Designer
- Sound assets
- Composer
- Audio programmer
- General Programmer
- Game Designer
Michael Ey
- Lead Programmer
- Game Engine Design and Development
- Graphics Programmer
- Systems Programmer
- AI Programmer
- Game Designer
Original concept
- Kelley Piering and Michael Ey
_______________
Additional Testers
- Matthew Turner
- Matthew Glynn
The game over screen is reached from the
gameplay screen whenever the player runs out of lives before completing the game. The game over screen should display the final
score the play had accumulated up until they reached game over. That score will not include any sneeze bonuses they would have gotten in that level.
The game over screen will display the pseudo continue button.
The pseudo continue button is an image displaying the text "Continue" styled like a selected menu item. Although it cannot actually be selected like a menu item, it will serve as a visual indicator to the player that pressing the confirm button they would use on a menu screen.
After leaving this screen, the player will return to the main menu.
The help screen is accessible from the
main menu. It is made of 3 sub screens which the player can cycle through. Upon entering the help screen, the player will first see the
Controls (screen) subscreen.
Cycling through is done with the menu navigation buttons. Additionally, the player can cycle forward with the confirm button. This screen is exited back to the main menu screen with the back button.
Listed below is the content for each of these screens.
As Lisette, you fly through the air avoiding the duzzles who will instantly kill you if they get directly in your nose. However, merely grazing them will only tickle your allergies and can build up the energy for an explosive sneeze which will damage the duzzles.
Use your spray bottle’s two firing modes to destroy the duzzles and your feather duster to deflect them. Watch out, because they will divide if they get too large!
Complete each level by destroying all the duzzles. Smaller duzzles are worth more points than larger ones.
Menus are
screens which have selectable
menu items.
A menu item is a selectable item on a menu screen. It is selected with the confirm button. Generally, menu items also have a corresponding description which is visible on the screen.
Menu items are described throughout this section with the following syntax:
- Visible text - visible description (if any) - screen/menu selecting the item will go to (if any)/effects of selection (if ambiguous)
All menus have the same controls unless otherwise specified.
The main menu is the first screen the player sees when the player begins the game. It is also the screen the game returns to when leaving the
Game over screen or the final
credits screen.
The main menu has the follow menu items which lead to the indicated other screens/menus:
Unlike the other menus, the menu items on the main menu screen do not have descriptions.
The main menu screen should show the game logo and the menu items. The background music should be the title track.
This menu is accessible by pressing the pause button from the
gameplay screen.
This screen has the following menu items:
Visually, this screen is a box in the center of the gameplay screen with the gameplay itself washed out behind it. The music is the same as the music from the level the game was paused from playing at a lowered volume.
The options menu allows the player to adjust options for the game.
The options screen will have the following menu items:
- Gamepad: on/off - Toggle mouse/gamepad control of duster -
- Fullscreen: on/off - Toggle fullscreen mode - game will immediately switch in or out of full screen mode when this is selected
- Sound volume: 0-100 % - Adjust volume of sound effects - Effect is instantaneous*
- Music volume: 0-100 % - Adjust volume of background music - Effect is instantaneous*
- Difficulty: Easy/Medium/Hard - Adjust the game difficulty (will restart game) - causes restart only if the options screen was entered from the pause screen and the option has changed from what it was previously when the player tries to go back to the pause screen.
- Go back - Return to previous screen - Previous screen will be pause screen or main menu screen
*These are adjusted with left/right on the arrow keys/D-pad (depending on controls) rather than with the normal confirm buttons to select.
