Dungeon Smashers, a design document

A few days ago after playing a few hands of Magic, I loaded up Smash TV and decided to take some actual notes, in the past I have just been observing the gameplay, one mechanic at a time. I needed to know the types of enemies in each arena for each level. I'm starting with Level 1 just to keep things simple. Level 1 is my favorite level of Smash TV. What's interesting is that I like each subsequent level less and less. To be fair the game was designed to eat quarters lol. I can't imagine how many quarters the game required to get past level 3. Perhaps I will record the number of continues on my next few playthroughs.

Level 1 of Smash TV contains these enemy types, my corresponding enemy type is listed to the right.

Clubbers                          Orcs
Fast Clubbers                   Fast Orcs
Bombers                          Goblins
Tanks                               Wizards
Wall Shooters                   Dwarves
Moving Blobs                   Moving Clouds

There is also the boss who shall remain secret.

I drew the layout on a piece of paper, then started to layout my level in TorqueX. I had to try a few different methods for moving the camera and the player around the arenas. I'm also going to create an arena selector component which can be attached to any enemy and the component will tell them how to act depending on the arena they are in.

Every Arena is going to look a little different than the others of course, I just haven't thought about what kind of differences there will be. I'm still seeing if a pixel artist would like to help with the project. Maybe after Level 1 is released onto the web an artist will decide to join. The next step for me is to populate the arenas with their respective enemys, and then send this level to the game's audio designers and see what crazy things come back.