TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

The ‘Tiny World’ Game I Didn’t Make At The Weekend

Another Ludum Dare, the competition to make a game in a weekend! Another weekend I can’t really do so! Instead, I worked on Gunpoint. But as before, I’ll tell you what game I would have made. The theme was Tiny World, and my game idea is called… Launch Craft.

Top-down, space. You control a vast mothership, bigger than any sun, drifting through a dense system of planets and stars. Hovering your cursor over tiny planets scans them, and after a short delay, reports whether any of your people are captive there or not.

As you pass, the tiny planets launch even tinier capital ships at you, zapping at you with tiny weapons but doing no actual damage. You can destroy these with your giant main laser, but it’ll also obliterate any planet in its path, so you have to be a bit careful.

Once you’ve found a planet with some captives on it, you’ve got to wipe out all the capital ships, then you can right click on it to “Launch Craft”.

A tiny pixel of black leaves the body of your ship and flies towards the planet. When it gets there, cut to:

Top down, globe view. You control a vast black disc of a ship as whole nations drift beneath you, their cities and roads sparkling orange at night. (It’s night because you attacked from the opposite side to the sun.)

The cities launch squadrons of fighter jets against you, which do a little damage to your craft if not destroyed with your main laser. Holding the cursor over a city scans it for captives. When you find some, and you’ve cleared the skies, you can right click on that city to “Launch Craft”.

A tiny pixel of black leaves the body of your ship and flies towards the city. When it gets there, cut to:

Side-on, cityscape view. You control a large black dropship zooming above the rooftops. (The sunset’s orange because that’s the colour of the nearest star.)

Soldiers shoot homing missiles at you from their rooftops, which do significant damage if they hit. You can fry them with your main laser, and burn missiles out of the air, but the beam soon destroys any buildings behind. Hovering the cursor over a building slows your ship for a moment to scan it for captives. If you find some, and the soldiers are all dead, you can right click on it to “Launch Craft”.

A black missile shoots from your ship, slamming into the wall of the building. Cut to:

Side-on, building cross-section. You control a small, flying, baby-squid-like alien, hovering through the building’s floors. (The building is purple. That is random.)

Security personnel fire automatic weapons at you, which kill if they hit. You can fry them with your brain laser, and burn holes through the floors of the building.

On one floor, you see the Captives: others of your species kept in glass jars for military experiments. Once you get to them, you have to destroy their tanks with your laser, then blast your way through the wall to get out.

If you die at any point up to here, we cut back to the previous stage and another craft is launched. If you die after this point, we cut back to the mothership and the captives on this planet are lost.

Assuming you get out, we cut to:

Cityscape. The dropship picks you up from the building, but now the streets are crawling with soldiers. You have to shoot down incoming missiles from all directions while you lift off to the top of the screen. Cut to:

Globe. Fighters have scrambled from all over the planet to intercept you, and their combined fire is lethal if you don’t cut their numbers down with your laser. As long as you survive, the disc of your ship grows larger and larger until it fills the screen and we cut to:

Space. No sound but the quiet hum of the mothership. The planet launches more capital ships if you don’t destroy it, but they can’t scratch you. You drift on, scanning for more captives.

A bunch of people asked if they or someone else could make this – yes! I hereby waive all rights to this thing and chuck it into the public domain, anyone can do anything with it.

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