The Upgrade System

Hey Folks, quick fun announcement: I've got a teaser trailer going!

In a Shoot-Em-Up, Upgrades are one of the most important features to the gameplay loop- they allow for an increase in strength of enemies, a raising of stakes, and for an increase to the power fantasy. However, there's rarely a strict set of guidelines provided for Upgrades- They present an increase of power to the player, and that's basically it, how it's done is up to the developer.

Since I'm aiming to make Bellerophon a Rouge-Like, I wanted the Upgrade system to contain random elements, but I also want to encourage different approaches and strategies to the player. To meet both these requirements I created a solution: 3 upgrade paths, with semi-randomized elements.

Path #1 is the Survivability path- This path is the most complex to work with; the goal is to reward players who don't get hit with upgrades to total HP or shield duration, while making sure that if a player gets hit, the Restore Health upgrade has a chance to appear in the upgrade rotation. This gives players a trade-off: Healing back all your HP is effectively restoring all your lives in other games, you can get hit a base of 3 times, and that amount can be increased, so a health would be extremely powerful, but it gives you no numerical advantage, just a higher chance to survive until the next upgrade.

Path #2 is the Attack path- This path focuses on Attack Damage and Fire Rate of both the player and their Drones (linking into path #3). It's rather straightforward, and can increase the effectiveness in combat.

Path #3 is the Assist path- This path contains Drones, Assistants that fulfill different projectile roles. Some Drones just shoot basic projectiles the player's Bike shoots at a slow rate, others shoot beams that pass through enemies, or missiles that deal area damage.

When a player gets an upgrade, they are provided a randomly selected Upgrade from the list of remaining upgrades for each section; This allows for both diversification of what's available, and specialization into a specific type of upgrade. After the player selects a specific upgrade (Aside from Restore Health) it is removed from the upgrade pool.

All upgrade paths have a set amount of upgrades, there's only so strong a player can get, however each section is planned to have enough upgrades that in a normal playthrough there's going to be no way to get them all. Also the way upgrades are distributed is currently linked to the player's score; since enemies are worth more in higher difficulties, a player taking on a higher risk/challenge will be able to end the game at a higher level of power compared to a normal or casual mode player.

As a final comment, I made the designs to look like Schematics/Computer Vectors; I really enjoy this look, and trying to find ways to make them almost minimalist, or technical looking, was great fun. It was also cool to visualize what's normally a top-down asset, like the gun or projectile, in a 3D view.