Arne's LD17 concepts

I was sleeping when the ‘Islands’ theme was announced for LD17, but now I’m awake and throwing ideas around. My first ideas felt too derivative, so I decided to go for something more exotic in the end.

Basically, you’re playing a large floating creature (an island of sorts) who raids islands. The creature can abduct human slaves which it uses for labor. The slaves can build factories, turrets etc on the back of the creature. As the raids go on, the island inhabitants get more and more upset, and defensive forces around the islands grow larger.

The strategy of the game is to figure out which islands to attack, since they offer different resources and different defense. A more developed creature will be able to grab more loot per raid, but the opposition will also be tougher later on.

The turrets could go in three groups (A,B,C) which can be fired individually. For example, the player can choose to put medium distance flak in one group, and long distance sniping in another. Aiming is done with the mouse. Each level (island) has a certain scroll distance to go. During the scroll, the creature is attacked by various enemies. They vary in terms of damage type (some might kill population), movement type, hit points, defense type, bullet trajectory, etc.