Game Design - Slinger

I've decided to evolve a game design, called Slinger and use this blog as an experimental repository for the ideas, as did Danc in his excelent Lost Garden. The design for slinger will be posted as a series and downloadable prototypes will be accessible from here as well.

The series will consist of incremental and iteractive essays about the game:

1 - Introduction and basic game mecanics (april 01, 2008)
2 - Reward system and difficulty management (april 02, 2008)
3 - Setting ideas (april, 03, 2008)
4..N - Iteractive reviews of the design (during april 2008)
N+1 - Post Morten (when finished...)

Introduction

Slinger will be an action game where the player takes the role of a boy equiped with a sling. Armed with the sling and rocks, he has to defend his farm's animals againts all sorts of threats.

Player mecanics
Slinger is a 3rd person view 3D game where the player uses the keys to move the character and the mouse to turn it. Moving around the area there will be animals, that tend to run away from him, and other scene elements, like fences, barns, trees, etc.

To throw rocks the player uses the mouse. By holding the left-button, the sling stay in armed position. The player stretches the sling's rubber by pulling back the mouse. The rock is thrown when the players releases the button. While the sling is hold armed, the player is free to move with the keys and "aim" by moving the mouse from side to side, remembering that the sling's power is controlled by the disntance he moves the mouse back.

Animals behavior
Animals in Slinger will behave as in nature, moving as groups, and being predators and preys. The preys will try to avoid the predators and the player, while predators will try to attack the preys (when hungry) and avoid the player (except when they decide that he's also a prey).

Final thoughts
I've decided to start with the basic mechanics because it's the first thing I must implement and test. If the basic mechanics is not fun, nothing else will be. In the next post I'll write about some reward system ideas to make the game enjoyable in the long run (not so long, since the game is intended for casual players).

Fell free to comment on the idea...