Reference

• Patapon (of course)
  • Rank 2 in relevance
• HiFi Rush (Youtube)
  • Rank 1 in relevance
  • This is the most similar game to our ideas. It has combos. Every attack and enemy attacks are on beats. Every action will generate sounds that sync with the background music. It has mini music games during combat, like repeating the beats played by the boss, or play according to a sequence (is this called a combo meter? See Youtube 2:22) when using skills.
  • Key takeaways: offbeat hits will not affect the action of the character (the character will still act on beat), but it will affect the damage/effectiveness.
• Soundfall (Youtube)
  • Rank 4 in relevance
  • Key takeaways: attack and dash must be on beat. If off beat, attack damage will be reduced. If off beat for 3 consecutive times, attack and dash will be in cooldown for a while.
• No Straight Roads (Youtube 1st boss fight since 22:15)
  • Rank 3 in relevance
  • Key takeaways: defense must be on beat (which means boss attacks are also on beat). Collect notes to attack the boss. The 1st boss fight is quite interesting. The boss stays still and there is a lock-on camera.

Tentative Design

Gameplay

• WASD are used for moving
• 4 keys are used for abilities
  • Which 4 keys?
    • JKL;
    • JKIL
    • arrow keys
• Space bar is used for dashing

Hero has 4 abilities, encoded by (JKIL as e.g.)

• Each ability starts with a different key, to keep it simple
• With each key pressed, a note (with different colors for different abilities) starts revolving the hero (maybe on a virtual five-line musical staff). A correct sequence conjures an attack (maybe visualized as an arrow), heal, revive, or ulti.
• A wrong key pressed or a complete miss of beat or a dash clears the sequence.
• Attack: (red) starts with J. e.g. JIKL
  • Attack charges the ultimate
• Heal: (green) starts with K. e.g. KLKJ
• Revive Teammates: (blue) starts with L. e.g. LIJK
  • When a character dies, they need some revive energy (e.g. 10) to be brought back.
  • Anyone alive can play this revive spell so that all currently dead characters get charged 1 revive energy.
  • Revived hero has an invincible period of (maybe) 1 second.
• Ultimate: (gold) starts with I. e.g. IIKL
  • When ultimate is played, the player enters a invincible state where he plays a combo meter (Youtube at 2:22) in order to perform the ulti.
  • A wrong key will not end the ultimate, but will affect effectiveness.
  • Each character has a different ultimate with different demand for charges: (Maybe choose 4 out of these?)
    • Mark the boss so that all attacks are a multiplicity in damage for some period of time.
    • Heal all characters by some amount.
    • Charge the revive energy of all dead characters by some amount.
    • Charge everyone’s ultimate by some amount.
    • Stun the boss for some seconds.
• The effectiveness of every ability is affected by whether or not the keys are played on beats.