Groundless Game Design Document
After jumping down from the base the player lands in the actual play area. This map is designed mostly in vertical space. Starting high up in the mountain the player makes his way downwards to the boss area. On his way he encounters enemies and platforming challenges.
The map consists of islands of different size and look. Bigger islands are connected by smaller ones or other platforming elements like rope bridges or jump pads.
There are three kinds of equipment in groundless, masks, items and consumables. While items reset each run, masks are kept and can be improved to provide long term progress. Consumables can be unlocked and upgraded at the item shop located at the base.
Masks and items share a categorization:
| Category | Color | Icon | Stats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Offense | Red |
| |
| Defense | Green |
| |
| Fortune | Yellow |
| |
| Neon | Violett |
| |
| Utility | Blue |
|
Each mask has only two of the stats shown in the table above per category.
Masks in groundless change the game-play in a similar way like character classes do in most other games. Each mask has special features that make the player play in a certain way. Some have special abilities, some distribute the passive stats in a new way. Masks can be acquired while playing in two ways. Either by finding fragments in hidden places and combining them once a set is complete or by defeating a boss. Before each run the player can decide which mask to wear and therefore what play-style he wants to use. A simple example would be selecting between a defensive mask with high HP and low ATT and an aggressive mask with low HP and strong ATT. The benefits and drawbacks of a base level mask always even out.
Masks progress in two ways:
Masks can be upgraded by defeating enemies. Each defeated enemy provides a certain amount of XP. Once a set amount is reached the mask upgrades to the next level. Each upgrade gives the mask better stats, the drawbacks stay the same.
After finishing a run the player can feed the gathered items into the mask he used depending on their category. Every item provides a set amount of progression points based on its rarity. For example, if the item is categorized as "defense" and is of "legendary" rarity he can feed 10 progression points into HP and shield. Each point improves the stat by a set amount. The player can also choose to not spend the points and keep half of them as general points to spend them on any stat of any mask later on.
Masks have different tiers, the higher the tier, the harder it is to play.
| Tier | Description |
|---|---|
| T1 | Easy To Play, no need to read the mechanics of the mask |
| T2 | Small mechanic details worth reading and thinking about while playing |
| T3 | In-depth mechanics whole character is based around. The player needs to fully understand and think about it while playing. |
| T4 | Extremely challenging builds which combine high risk and high reward game-play with a high skill ceiling. |
| (ICON) | Devils Skull (Tier 1) |
|---|---|
| Base level | (+) Increases the Damage of your Character throughout the run and burns enemies when damaging. This effect does only stack whilst being in-run. (-) Enemies can steal your Stacks on-hit. Killing those will restore your stacks. |
| Lvl. 1 | Killing and enemy increases your Attack Damage by 1 |
| Lvl. 2 | Killing an enemy increases your Attack Damage by 1. Hitting enemies applies a burn effect that deals 10 Damage each second for 2s |
| Lvl. 3 | Killing an enemy increases your Attack Damage by 2. Hitting enemies applies a burn effect that deals 10 Damage each second for 10s. |
| Category | Stats |
| Offense |
|
| Defense |
|
| Fortune |
|
| Neon |
|
| Utility |
|
Items can be found during runs by either killing enemies or finding them at hidden places. The player starts the save game with a rather small pool of items to not confuse him and give him something to look forward to as he can unlock more items by playing. An item can be unlocked by completing small challenges. Less complex items demand easier challenges like “deal 1000 damage” or “die 20 times” which can be unlocked by simply playing a lot. More complex items have harder challenges like “beat boss 1 in under 2 minutes”, “kill a boss with less than 1% hp left” or defeat 5 enemies simultaneously”. Besides visual information like names and icons items have following attributes:
Every item that the player finds will give him bonuses on his stats. If a player finds more than one copy of an item in a run, its effect gets stacked up to a maximum of 3 copies which improves its effect. If an item is found 4 times it evolves to an advanced version with an additional effect. In this example the stacking effect is “Attack heals +1 hp”. Apart from the empowered version, the improvement is linear. With each stack, the item is worth 1x, 2x, 3x, ... the amount of progression points.
If the player gets an item a 5th time it will be the base version which can be stacked again.
Items can be permanently upgraded to provide more end-game possibilities, strategies and a feeling of greater power. Upgrading is expensive and can be done at the upgrade station at the Hub.
TODO
What stats do these upgrades give
Each item has a short description that explains the effect of the item in simple words.
Items can have the following 4 rarity levels which can be found on islands of different difficulty:
| Rarity | Progression Points | Effect of Rarity | Can be found on... |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 1 | The higher the rarity the better are the stats it provides. | Easy and medium islands |
| Uncommon | 3 | Medium and hard islands | |
| Rare | 5 | Hard and Boss islands | |
| Legendary | 10 | Boss islands and hidden places |
Active items can be used by the player by pressing the assigned button while passive items passively boost the stats of the player in many different ways. Active items have an activation cost which stands for the amount of neon it consumes on use. While active items consume neon, passive don't. The player can loot and stack as many passive items as he wants, active items are limited to one at the time. Active items can be stacked and empowered like passives. The player can decide to swap his active item for another but he will loose all stacks he collected during the run.
Finding Items
Items can be found when defeating enemies or completing platforming challenges. Each drop has 3 Items whose category is random, the rarity depends on the difficulty of the island. For example, if the island is a medium hard one, most likely all three items have uncommon rarity. Occasionally one or more items are of one grade higher rarity (rarity+). The player then has to choose one of the items to keep.
| Name | Bulwark |
| Active/Passive | Passive |
| Rarity | Common |
| Category | Defensive |
| Activation Cost | none |
| Effect | Max HP +30 |
| Stacking Effect | Max HP +30 |
| Empowered Effect | Max HP +150 and a chance to root the enemy |
| Description | The bulwark improves the players max HP |
The player can take one consumable per run with him. Consumables are kind of active items with a passive effect, like restoring HP. Consumables have a cooldown-time.
The base is the area where the player hangs out between runs and manages his masks and items and tests abilities.
The Fountain is the spring of neon all tech and masks at the base are fed from.
Found Masks sit on pedestals at a temple-like structure. The player can select which one to use for the next run and apply progression points at the middle of the platform.
Defeated monsters can be found as statues in a garden. Statues have signs which can be read for more information like weaknesses and attack moves.
Information about items can be read at the Item Codex.
The Shrine opens once the player found all masks. Inside is an altar where map modifiers can be applied.
At the Shop the player can buy upgrades for the base and map.
At the Item Upgrade shop the player can upgrade items so he directly finds empowered versions of it. Or buy a chance to directly find empowered items. Also he can unlock and upgrade consumables.
Groundless has a tutorial where a 'first-time-player' can learn the Core Gameloop and basic mechanics. When starting the game for the first time the player sees a splash screen which requires him to continue. After that he finds himself in the tutorial.
| Action | Controller | Keyboard+Mouse |
|---|---|---|
