A game mode that never was.

[Leaf_It]

First off, sorry for the wall of text.
Back in early 2012 I was taking a graphics class as a senior in high school. I was very much addicted to Tilt to live, and it remains one of the few games I still play on my iPod, from time to time. As any 18 year old guy, I had my fantasies of many things, but one of them was a new game mode in Tilt to Live. I knew it wasn't likely, and OutWitters was under production, so OML's attention was elsewhere. I concluded that my only chance, was to make some rough draft art assets for the game mode, and send them in. I spent the better part of 3 weeks, thinking up just how I wanted this game mode to be, and what the stuff would look like. Then another week making all of it in Illustrator, because I wanted it to match the vector art style of Tilt to Live. When I was almost done, I got behind in class and never got back to this little project of mine.

Well Yesteraday I decided to check out OML's site, for the first time in about 3 months. To my surprise, I saw Tilt to Live stuff. At first I thought it was a new game mode, and I ecstatic. Then I saw that it was a sequel, and I still loved it. It was wonderful. But then my mind went back to my glory days of playing Tilt to Live in class, (whilst ignoring my teacher) and I remembered my old little project. "Well," I said to myself, "Its now or never." And so I dug up my old files and found the project. So without further ado, Here is my Game mode Idea:

• Asteroids
"Asteroids?" "You're an arrow, and you fly around blowing crap up, this was meant to be."

In-Game Concept (This was what I thought it might look like)

I didn't want this to be an exact recreation of Asteroids, and I didn't think OML, would want that either. I wanted it to be Asteroids, with a TTL spin to everything.

The player, and a red dot. This will never change, but how they fight might...


One of the biggest changes I knew would need to be made, was how the player attacked. In asteroids, you don't dodge everything, and attack only upon picking a weapon up for a one time use. In Asteroids, you are constantly able to shoot. I wanted to keep the game hands free, so I thought that having the ship shooting about once every second, instead of having to hit a fire button would be ideal. I didn't want to recycle art assets, and I didn't feel that the Viva la Turret bullet would quite fit, so I redesigned it to this little guy. (Red dot for comparison purposes.)


• Enemies
Enemies both old and new...
One of the First things I wanted to do was make the dots look more like chunks of space rocks, but at the same time, I wanted them to fit the style of Tilt to Live. So I kept it simple, and round. Unlike red dots, these enemies wouldn't track you. They would instead move around like floating rocks in space. They would bounce off the walls, and even each other. 1 bullet would kill the smaller onces, and 4 bullets would break the larger ones into 4 smaller ones.
"But Leaf_It, what if I like the red dots?" Well if you remember playing Asteroids, and ever got very far, you'll remember that sometimes an alien ship would come in, and shoot at you. Well what game mode would be complete without floating read dots at least some where in it. So I came up with the idea, that every minute a red dot appears off the edge of the screen, and moves towards you at a relatively quick speed. Slow enough you can dodge it, if you're paying attention though. It will go in a straight line, almost like a bullet. Once the dot reaches the other edge of the screen, it changes direction, and it will again go straight at you. It will continue like this until you kill it, but for every minute, 1 additional dot will spawn. So 1 dot the first minute, 2 dots the next, 3 dots the one after that, and so on.
(New enemies, and the classic red dots.)

(I'll use Red dots so that you can have an idea of how big stuff is.)

• Weapon Pick-ups
I felt that most of the Tilt to Live weapons, were a little OP for floating rocks. So I came up with 5 new weapons/upgrades just for this game mode. These are the basic ideas for them.
"YAY NEW STUFF!"

My first Idea was Time Bomb. The Idea was to stop time for everything around you, but you still got to move at normal speed. I think it would be better though, if everything was just slowed down greatly, rather than completely stopped. But that would be up to OML.


Every game mode needs a way to clear the area around you. Nukes, freeze blasts, or bubble shields have saved me more times than I care to remember. Even Viva La Turret pushed everything away from you the moment it got a turret. Well I wanted to stay unique, so I didn't want to recycle the Nuke. And so a new bomb was born. Shrapnel Blast I called it. It would push everything away just a little, and then explode into debris, that would fly in every direction. Each bit of debris would act as a single bullet. (I was thinking about 16 bits of debris, maybe more depending on how it was in-game)


Again, I didn't want to copy what was already in the game, but I wanted to add some sort of back up plan, for accidentally getting hit by an asteroid. So I came up with the Cracked Shield. It would break upon contact with an asteroid, but it would also destroy that asteroid. No explosion, just a chance to live. I also thought a 1 second invulnerability would help in-case you were cornered. (needs playtesting...)


Rapid Fire. For 5 seconds, you shoot as fast as if you were in a Viva la Turret. The time may need to be reduced, but then again, sucking red dots into a black hole was kind of OP too so, maybe not... This will help to clear the place out temporally, and its an easier way to get rid of those pesky red dots that could be flying at you. I never designed an icon for this one, but I wanted the background of it to be black for some reason. This was all I had for it.


Lastly, an upgrade? One of the bigger problems with being able to move whilst firing, is that its hard to aim. But what if your shot was bigger, and wider? Well that's the idea behind this Upgrade pick-up. Each time you pick it up, you fire an extra bullet slightly off from the main bullet. Eventually it will start acting like a shotgun. But there IS a catch. If you have a shield, and it breaks, you loose all of these upgrades. (capped at 5 bullet shots. After you have 5 they will not spawn until the upgrade is lost)


Where do they come from?
When you kill a small Asteroid, there would be an 8% chance of any one of the pick-ups dropping.
When you kill a large Asteroid, there would be a 20% chance of any one of the pick-ups dropping.
I wanted to design a crate or something, that would fly through every now and then. If would act like an asteroid, and kill you if you touched it, but for it, the walls are not solid. If you destroyed it, it would explode sending 5 bits of debris, flying out in random directions. These debris would hurt both you, and the asteroids. I never designed it's icon either.

This was my game mode idea. There was a bit more to it, but I can't remember it all. I hope some of you like it. And I hope it might inspire OML to do something like this someday. Even as its own game, I'd buy it.

Thank you for Reading - Leaf_It.

TL;DR: Tilt to Live should have an Asteroids game type.