Game Overview
Title: Yu Gong: Prologue
Concept Summary: Yu Gong sets out to trade beyond the mountain but is stopped by the fearsome Flame Mountain. To press on, he must battle and befriend monstrous foes—only to learn they were once humans cursed by an arrogant immortal who punished mankind for daring to stand alongside the gods. Determined to avenge this injustice, Yu Gong resolves to storm the Celestial Court (天宫).
Core Gameplay
Our game is a roguelike action-adventure with RPG elements inspired by Chinese mythology, specifically the tale of Yu Gong (愚公移山). Players will experience a blend of:
- Combat Mechanics: A mix of card-based combat (similar to Slay the Spire) and bullet-hell dodging segments where players must avoid falling rocks and divine attacks.
- Character Progression: After completing each level, players select from randomly generated enhancement cards that can combine for interesting effects, creating high replayability despite a relatively short (1-hour) playthrough.
- Narrative Structure: The game is divided into three chapters:
- Chapter 1: Climbing the mountain and battling creatures
- Chapter 2: Finding a way to reach the heavens
- Chapter 3: Storming the Celestial Court
Visual Style
The game will feature a blend of traditional Chinese art styles with modern gaming aesthetics. Character designs will include Yu Gong himself, transformed humans as monsters (like wolf and bear warriors), and various celestial beings.
Technical Architecture
- Overworld map for narrative progression
- Instanced combat encounters
- Powerup system with blessings from various deities:
- Queen Mother’s blessing (peaches that restore HP)
- Taoist Master’s blessing (pills that increase max HP)
- Erlang God’s blessing (a heavenly dog that damages bosses)
- And several others that provide unique abilities
Development Approach
We’ll focus on creating a strong narrative framework with branching storylines, while implementing accessible combat mechanics that are engaging but not overly complex to develop. Each NPC will have pre-written storylines with some dialogue potentially generated by AI to increase variety.
For the choice of game development process, we will choose to develop something in between MVP and vertical slice, as we want to reconstruct the overall gameplay and overworld map in MVP since we are ambitious about incorporating all three chapters, while for combat encounters, we decide to be more specific about art style and music choices.
Key Challenges for Art, Tech, and Design
The key challenge we are facing is art design. And since AI animation generation is not the most reliable right now, we decide to proceed with hand drawn pixel art, which will be another obstacle.
For tech, the use of Unity is less than convenient, as we are still getting used to using Unity for 2D game development. Because our game involves a real-time bullet hell and platformer component, it would be quite challenging to develop a smooth and bug-free gameplay experience within the project’s time frame. It’s also challenging to ensure that the real-time, turn-based, and narrative components coexist harmoniously and can transition smoothly and flexibly between each other.
Designing a game that satisfies our imagination of re-telling a story that we, the game developers, are familiar with, becomes the major problem. Since we are facing the audience that has no knowledge of Yu Gong and his story, we want to make them feel welcomed and informed about the background of the gameplay. Another challenge we are facing the deck design, as we are aiming for a rogue-like game. How to control the growth of stats for the character to make it high enough that excites the players but low enough to establish the difficulty, or the fun of challenge in game becomes another variable to control.
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