Refresh

Refresh is a third-person shooter with movement reminiscent of arena shooters such as Quake 3 and rogue-like elements, meaning perma-death and randomly generated levels. The player assumes the role of an unknown person in the form of a parallelogram trapped in the void with a simple goal: escape. In their way stands four deadly boss enemies, Voidkeepers 1, 2, and 3, as well as the Warden, who can only be fought once all three Voidkeepers are defeated. Although on each death, the void is refreshed, resetting the player’s progress toward their goal, as well as regenerating the world.

My intention with Refresh is to improve as a gameplay programmer especially but to also improve as an artist and a sound designer, I don’t think I’ll worry too much about animation for the time being, although this project is still in pre-production so that is subject to change. For now, Refresh will have minimalistic graphics because nobody really knows how the inside of the void would look. At least for now, the characters will also be more minimalistic drawings, with the player being a parallelogram and the Voidkeepers also taking the form of shapes, although if I do change my mind on the sprites being minimalistic, I am more than open to challenge myself.

There will also be a vague narrative and a timer to track player completion time of the trial to encourage replayability. The enemies will also have very narrow damage windows, very high kill potential weapons, and high health pools, making all four extremely difficult to fight. Although there will be no power-ups or anything to aid less skilled players as part of the game is the player learning from their mistakes and overcoming the boss on their own, even if it takes a million tries. That is why I have decided to have only four combatants for the player to fight, rather than rooms full of enemies, to put it simply, I’ve decided to make more of a Souls-like challenge with weapons.

Sketches

I only have a few designs done, and keep in mind these will most likely be changed going into production, but here’s some concept art.

Timeline:

Week 1:

GDD made the game introduction and rules of play sections were filled in, as well as the maps and enemies being started. Normal Enemies were also being written at this time. Voidkeeper 1 was finished at the end of the week and I was starting on Voidkeeper 2. I had also started on describing the key features of Refresh and worked on the flowcharts.

Week 2:

Maps are more detailed, The maps are The Cells Of Empty and Pandora’s Expanse. The concept of normal enemies is taken out of the game in favor of the four boss enemies. A short narrative and description of the difficulty was also written at this time. 4 rough sketches were also made for the player, the fourth ended up being inserted into the document. I also created the HUD which was fairly easy, I’d already had the desired font from another project, and just had to use rectangles from there.

Week 3:

This week I was focused on designs, although I’m not that good of an artist, so the designs are very minimalistic, I’m talking shapes here, but maybe that’ll do for the void, maybe not, this week I got three more player designs done, the seventh ended up being final, I didn’t have time to work on much else because of schoolwork. Although I did get a description of a “TRIAL OVER” screen.

Week 4:

I just came back from a Thanksgiving break, so this could technically be week five although I’d like to get pre-production over with before I’m just starting production in January. So far this week, I’ve still been working on designs, all that’s complete thus far is the Voidkeeper 3 and Heavy Rifle design. I think I’ll start a devlog on my blog starting from this week to track my progress in developing Refresh.

Release Date:

I honestly have no idea when I’ll be able to publish given I’m still in pre-production, but I’m shooting for summer 2021.