The Picnic

Hello all,

I thought I would post my current workings and see what you thought about it or if you could offer me some tips. I am by no means an artist so some of the stuff in the following pictures and video are definitely just fillers because I like having art instead of just colored boxes.

Story

The Picnic is about a family which goes to the park to enjoy a nice picnic lunch. The food is laid out and the sandwiches are set on a very shinny silver platter. A cloud, looking quite happy, floats by and is hit in the eye by am incredibly intense glare from the silver platter which makes him angry. The cloud starts shooting electric lightning orbs at the family evacuating all the members except the dad who decides to defend his family and the picnic he worked for. Wielding the silver plate it is up to you, the dad (player), to reflect the orbs back at the cloud.

Concept

The Picnic's play style is like the games where you must catch the falling object to gain points, the difference between them is that when you reflect the lightning orb you have a potential of hitting the enemy cloud which gains you more points thus adding to your leader board score. Because this is a quick, play for a minute styled game there is no definitive ending and is just made to bring out the competitive nature of humanity with trying to get the highest score you can to beat everyone else.

Notes

As of right now I have no story cut-scene made, I am currently trying to make it but because I possess no art ability at all I may just have a screen with words

The major thing to note is that this game is very unfinished and is still having the programming worked out. I am just posting what I have to get some creative advice

To see a video of the game you can go here:

To play the game you can go here: http://thepicnic.clay.io/

Thank you for checking this out and I hope to have more for you in the future.

Simple! I like simple things.

I know you said the art is just filler, buy my first thought is to make that cloud mean. Having a hard time wanting to hit a nice fluffy cloud. I need to be mad at it!

Scoreboard is just counting up constantly.

Definitely get some art done for that cutscene! It's a clever storyline. I want to see it!

Looks good, though!

Thank you for the help

I do plan on making it menacing I just have been trying to get to the whole mechanics of the game at the moment but I will get to that asap.

I have the scoreboard counting up so that you can see the score you have based on the survival time of that game. Do you think I should have it be more points based instead of time based (ie. for every enemy hit)?

Well, not necessarily, but just watching the scoreboard count up doesn't make me feel like I'm accomplishing anything. It just kinda loses meaning counting up nonstop.

Even if there were just a timer, and every time it hit, say a minute, it would knock the score up a notch, so technically, it's even the same scoring, it would just make me feel more like I earned it. I think both ideas, or even more would be great, points for blocking, points for hitting the cloud, points for getting 3 in a row, or combo points that increase exponentially.. anything!

Just make the player feel rewarded, ya know? I think that'd keep them latched on for longer..

Just my thoughts!

Ah now I understand, I 100% agree with you. Thank you for your help, I am doing a super overhaul of the game at the moment so I hope you will try the revamped version when it is done.