Before I moved game engines I also moved on with the type of project I was making. Long story short the original project I was working on was a game in the same vein as Downwell.
The only mechanical difference was instead of relying on shooting it was a game about kicking + shooting from your boots.
That during the process of development I was having fun; however, I had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind of, "this is too similar to Downwell and will be compared"
Keep in mind the game mechanics I added.
- Kick parry
- Rapid kicking/ flutter kicking
- Side kicking and kicking above you
- Parry Ammo (when you successfully parried you got ammo back and a parry bullet, if your gun was full of ammo instead of giving you ammo back you got your gun overstuffed with ammo until you landed)
- Gun boots mechanic
- Gun kicking off walls as in to fall faster you'd kick a block above you if you were going up and quickly press the kick button
- Quick loading (you'd take a moment before moving from falling and quickly load your gun by you guess it, tapping the left or right key to load up your gun) - the idea with this mechanic is your actually loading up your gun with kinetic energy and like a self imposed recovery frame, more powerful guns too more time to load and as thus more recovery frames
- Time items (you have x amount of time to beat the level in order to get an upgrade)
- Upgrade shop (you'd buy upgrades from)
- Shockwave (the shockwave mechanic happens if you perform a melee attack as you're falling so the hit box of the melee attack instead creates a shockwave pushing out on the ground with the longer you fall = bigger shockwave.
Also keep in mind I added other enemy types to change up the gameplay. For this game idea I know it's up to the developer to think/ see if the game is too similar and I could never escape that feeling in the back of my mind that they were too similar.
I even went out of my way to change up the level design so your character had to make a choice; go to the shop for the rest area to fall down until you hit your next area or take your fate with chance to give you something good and as thus take the same rest area to hit.
Granted, I'm someone who over thinks things so in this case they could be different enough games to consider them not the same and since I'm more knowledgeable in Godot now I'm wondering if I should attempt the idea again.
