Yellow Jacket’s Hive

Setting:  underground lab / space base, with a lot of Tron mixed in

Gameplay:

Single player

Metroidvania

2D sidescrolling gameplay, 3D graphics

 

Level Concept:  A massive beehive built into the side of a cave (and a bar), somewhat mazelike; at the top, it opens to a wind farm at early sunset, where you fight the boss

Story:

The creatures of Chroma are all happy and content- each lives in their own colorized area, working with one another to create a happy society.  One day, the wizard Mr. White appeared and mind controlled the leaders of all the color zones!  Hex- a monochrome black & white wizard-in-training- has to go through all the zones and beat the leaders to snap them back to normal!  By defeating each leader, he’ll gain their power, which he can use both to fight and to continue through the puzzling levels of the game.

(It’s basically Megaman, except everything is heavily themed by color and shape, and nobody is a robot.  Also the gameplay has a stronger focus on exploration and all the areas connect Metroid-style.)

At this point in the game, the player has defeated one or two bosses already- the level will start in the very end of the cyan zone, and will show the transition from one color zone to another.  The player’s goal in the level is to progress through the hive, get to the top, and defeat Yellow Jacket, the boss.  They should also grab any powerups and make note of any branching paths along the way- this is partially inspired by Metroid, after all.

The boss, Yellow Jacket, is the leader of the beehive, and the one who set up the wind turbine system atop the hive.  All the creatures of Chroma need the hive to get their power, so it’s imperative the player get it back to normal!

The level prior to the hive was a cyan speakeasy, where patrons could order pure energy (collected from the hive).  As a result, there will be giant power cables working their way down the hive to the start of the level- these will also be used as an indicator of the correct way to go through the winding tunnels.

Full disclosure: this is building off of an idea I’ve had for a while, so I do already have one asset ready- the boss of the area, Yellow Jacket, is an already rigged and textured model.  He has one finished animation.

His design was based heavily off of a sketch made by Dillon Desimone, who is also taking this course.  Everything else I’ll be making over the course of this class will be entirely new and designed exclusively by me.

 

Art Style:

 

Nearly everything in the level besides the player character will be monochromatic from black to yellow.  (Some enemies may be themed like other bosses / areas, and thus be tinted their respective shades instead.)  The power lines that lead the player will be cyan, both to remind that their use is for the cyan zone, and to have a clear path to follow.  Inspired heavily by Tron.

 

Audio:
Again, heavily inspired by Tron.  Lots of synths, lots of bips and beeps.  I might make it sound NES-y by trying to lock myself to 2 sine waves, a triangle wave, and a noise wave, but that might be too retro for the style I’m going for.  I’ll have to experiment a lot with this.