Concept Statement
Chroma-Throne as a game was born from taking the idea of color and applying it to a fighting game as a main mechanic.
Game
A two player couch-competitive, 2.5D fighting game, where color is utilized for stealth, buffs, and special abilities.
Using their grappling hook, among other movement abilities, combat possibilities become varied and strategic for the players who choose to dive deep into the mechanics, while the game remains accessible to those who want casual fighting fun.
Players have 3 hits of health, a special charge meter, directional sword based combat, and projectiles at their disposal. Each player is a different color which signifies what Color Kingdom they are championing. At it’s core, the game represents the idea of war and we wanted that to come through in the gameplay mechanics. To win a match, players must reach the point total. To score points, players must either kill players, sit on the Chroma-Throne when it spawns, or capture territory. Doing so allows the player to use their stealth abilities, charge their special attack meter, and granting immunity from the hazards in that territory location while making it dangerous for all other players.
Within the game encounters become a mix of territory capture, tense brawler combat, and trap avoidance/platforming. Player choice in combat was really important to us when designing the game and the blending of the different color based and combat mechanics really allows for some interesting play styles and strategies.
My Role
My role on the team was to be a co-designer and co-programmer. On Chroma-Throne, my time was spent creating the color systems, the special ability system, the zone hazard system, as well as general game play programming. We didn’t have a dedicated programmer so I stepped up and helped program the majority of the systems within the game.
The Production Journey
Chroma-Throne started off as a concept developed by my development partner and friend Mico and I. We were watching an episode of the animated TV show Samurai Jack and we came upon this scene in the show where Jack fights a ninja. In this scene, both characters sink away and blend in with their respective colors, white and black, before fighting each other. We were instantly inspired by this scene and started thinking about how it would make a fun game.
So we started to prototype it! In the beginning of the project, our goal was to make an engaging as possible dueling game where players would be able to blend in with their own color on the battlefield, allowing stealth. For the purposes of our initial prototype we decided to keep this game as a local multiplayer game as not only would it be easier to build within our limited timespan but also because we felt this game would fit well within the genre. In this version we wanted to stick to two colors so we could focus on the combat mechanics initially. From the beginning of the project we were inspired by other dueling games such as Samurai Gunn with its focus on quick reaction times and tense gameplay due to it being a one hit kill system.
Once we got to a point where we were satisfied with the combat. We delved deeper into the how the player interacts with the color mechanics. We spent a long time developing different ideas and prototyping them when it came to the color interactions. During the development of this project I oversaw the majority of how the color systems interacted with the player and other objects. We developed and redeveloped during our rapid prototyping stage multiple systems every week in order to explore what would work well within the game.
We tried lots of different things, from different camera views like a more 3D style, to completely different gameplay modes focusing on painting the background like other games such as games like De Blob. One such iteration was the addition of the color special attack system. This system was meant to add an entire layer of strategy into the game when it comes to positioning as a player. When players are in a certain color, they will charge their special attack meter which when full would unleash an attack. We wanted each of these attacks to be unique for each color, this was partially because we wanted to impart a sense of character with each color and their associated kingdom. We looked at a lot of potential sources for inspiration of what to base these attacks off of and decided to base it off of color psychology and what each color represented. For example purple is typically associated with the color of royalty and so we thought it’d be fun to make the special attack of the purple color a royalty power trip. We give the player a crown as an angel chorus sings and we make that player invincible for a short period of time.
But sometimes as a player who might be losing, you have no territory and the other player seemingly has a huge advantage, capture a Chroma-Throne! Capturing a Chroma-Throne when it spawns by sitting on it will turn the entire battlefield and all it’s traps to your color, giving the losing player, a significant advantage.
When the battlefield is constantly changing and shifting as different colors blend with each other, this creates a very dynamic battlefield and play space. This incentivizes players to move around constantly which negates camping for long periods of time making sure no one feels too safe for too long. We wanted to give players as much choice as possible in how they could approach the game with their playstyle given the tactical puzzle-like nature the color system brings to the table.
Post Mortem
While Chroma-Throne did not move forward into next semester, I had a great time working on it with my team members. As a team we were very efficient and were able to iterate a huge amount over the course of the projects lifespan. This was one project were my focus personally and for my team was at the end of the day to make something that was enjoyable to play and come back to. The amount of people who had great duels during QA and the fun people had while playing proved to me that we accomplished that goal. The one thing I’d change was that we ran into a some technical problems during development that, had they been fixed sooner, would have let us had more time to focus more on adding new features. This project allowed me to delve deeper into the fighting game genre which I had always been curious about and I think we brought something unique to the table with Chroma-Throne. Once we were able to pin down how we wanted the color mechanics to work, we fell into a groove as a team and the project went more smoothly once we figured out how color would interact with everything. Overall, Chroma-Throne was a difficult but rewarding passion project due to the design and technical challenges it imposed.
Project Duration and Platform
Windows PC with Controllers
12 One Week Sprints (September 2018-December 2018)
Team
Dylan Alter - Designer, Game play Programming, Stage Designer, QA
Mico Demo - Designer, Game play Programming, VFX, QA (Portfolio Link)
Monica Almodovar - Artist, QA
Gavin Hieronymus - Producer, QA
