WHAT IS HUNTDOWN?
HUNTDOWN is an arcade style tactical stealth horror shooter game set in an endless megalopolis. you take the role of an exterminator - a mechanical lifeform designed to kill other mechanical lifeforms. it's grim work, but someone's gotta do it.
HUNTDOWN takes place in a dynamic, procedurally generated, extremely tight series of rooms, corridors, ladders, stairwells, drops, grates, and chambers. there is no regenerating health, no respawning medkits to be farmed, and no infinite ammo anywhere. if you run out, you're switching to fists and your flashlight. more details on the map generation algorithm to come in a later post, but it ensures a fresh, sprawling series of combat rooms connected by tightly packed corridors and throughfares, with lots of opportunities for flanking, tactics, and sightlines.
your character in HUNTDOWN is equipped with state of the art computer vision that functions adequately in well-lit conditions and rapidly degrades during adversarial chaos. you can shoot out individual lights or shoot out breakers to shut down an entire circuit of lights at once. you can also break pipes to release a spray of vision-obscuring, extremely loud steam. every action you make radiates noise, and not only can enemies hear you, but they can also see your flashlight cone and make inferences, work together to flank you, corner you, and ultimately kill you.
you will have to learn how to master your environment, move silently, conserve ammunition, practice trigger discipline, recognize landmarks, plan ambushes, know when to cut your losses, and, above all else, aim for center mass. breathe. steady your hands. and pull the trigger.
The HUNTDOWN tech demo will launch with an endless PVE arcade mode featuring a single map size & type (10x10x3 'concrete'), as well as support for netplay 2-4 player deathmatch, and, if i can figure out how to actually do it, a dedicated server (no promises on that one).
if the HUNTDOWN tech demo is fun, and people like to play it, i'll begin working on a full demo likely after finishing ZONEOUT, which will introduce the more roguelikey elements to the arcade mode, add significantly varied environments and level types/templates to both singleplayer and multiplayer, enhance the available multiplayer support, and introduce team matches.
if the HUNTDOWN demo demo is successful, then we go for the full thing, which will include but is not limited to; co-op pve, pvpve, alternate game modes (ctf and koth), drastically increased enemy and level scope and variety, tactical STT/NLP-driven AI squadmates (which is the thing i am most excited about), and some other bells and whistles.
i remember very distinctly the design philosophy of nintendo, at least mid-90s, early-2000s era - as the apocryphal story goes, before they even touched the first level in super mario 64, they needed to make sure he just felt good to control, and everything else followed.
well, i don't give a shit about a game that feels good to control. i want to make a game that increases your heartrate to dangerous levels and then coaxes out the sort of relief normally only post-nut clarity can bring you. i think HUNTDOWN will be that game.
watch this space!
