So now that we’ve figured out the building blocks of the gameplay, it’s time to bring it all together and start planning from a top-down perspective. That includes not only a big picture view of the game experience, but also an eye towards the fluffier side of game design: what it’s about narratively, and what it’s going to look like. It will also answer the question, “Why are all the enemies skeletons?” Thrilling stuff.

To decide these things, I looked through what I’d done so far and realized there was a bit of a conundrum caused due to the player having both a ranged attack and a melee attack: in most cases, the melee attack had to be more powerful. This ordinarily could be resolved with a little creativity, such as by saying “the main character can just throw rocks or something - that’ll handle it,” but I had a particular aesthetic I wanted to make happen in this game. Specifically, I wanted the main character to wield a blade in one hand and a gun in the other. This is a bit idiosyncratic, but what’s art without some interesting restraints?

Which leads to the problem: generally speaking, bullets cause more damage than knives, or even swords. If I wanted to make this work and not have it be completely silly (which is an option but not really what I’m going for this time), I’d need some sort of enemy which is actually more susceptible to melee attacks than being shot at. Whereupon I realized that undead, being able to easily shrug off internal organ damage, were the perfect way to go. And skeletons are even better, as compared to zombies they’re not particularly vulnerable to headshots, but you can easily image one collapsing into a pile of loose bones when given a good thwack.

Thus was born the idea that this game would be about an undead hunter wading through hordes of skeletons and wielding only a revolver and a cutlass (because she took it from a pirate once). I already had a concept for a monster hunter-y main character from a JRPG idea I was brainstorming a while back, so I decided to run with that: Anna Ramirez, undead Slayer, in a somewhat Castlevania-inspired fashion. After which I decided, what the heck, let’s just call it Slay. I’m not changing the name of the series now, though - that would just be confusing.

There’s plenty to work with here in future installments, including silver bullets, vampires, necromancers, etc. For now, this series will continue to document my design work on Slay Part I, which will constitute our dauntless hero exploring a single skeleton-filled cave network, collecting health upgrades, and eventually defeating the complex’s boss: a fearsome lich! Next time, we’ll start fleshing out the level itself.