Turtle Plunge

Twin stick shooter strategic action in a (mostly) underwater pinball environment

Work in progress- Seeking feedback!

Goal: Collect UFO parts from the ocean floor and deliver them to your UFO workshop. Save the aliens!!

Story:

You are a UFO repair turtle that collects UFO parts scavenged from the ocean floor, brings them to your workshop, and assembles them, hoping to one day fly to outer space. Unfortunately, the UFOs you find are all beat-up and never fly very well. BUT! The latest UFO you assemble, though also very beat-up, plays a distress signal upon assembly from the aliens that crashed. They've been taken captive by the US Government. You have their coordinates. They're not close, but with the help of their beat-up UFO and your repair skills, you just might be able to assemble and fly the ship enough times to eventually reach the captive aliens and rescue them. If the US Government and all the pesky ocean predators don't stop you first...

Controls

Controller **strongly** encouraged

Keyboard Controls:

Move:  WASD

Shoot: IJKL

Flip: Left/Right Shift

Drop: Space

Pause: Esc

Select: Enter

Game Concepts:

Health (green meter): Run out and its game over.

• LOST: enemies, projectiles, and running out of air
• GAINED: collecting green health plants that spawn on walls every 300 points
  

Air (blue meter): A turtle's gotta breathe. Run out and lose health fast.

• GAINED: collecting air bubbles, and going to ocean surface (where the air is). Also, the air power-up fills up your air and expands your max capacity a bit
• LOST: being underwater.

Energy (orange meter): Needed to swim.

• LOST: Active swimming with the left stick/dpad. Each thrust depletes energy.
• GAINED: NOT swimming. Gained much faster when resting on walls (being in contact with the "pinball flipper" walls throughout the level). 

UFO Part: Often but not always found on other ocean floor. They must be picked up and delivered to the UFO Workshop. Each level requires a number of UFO parts to be delivered. They are heavy to carry and can be dropped if too cumbersome (or strategically).

UFO Workshop: Location where UFO parts are delivered.  They are instantly delivered on contact.

Bouyancy:  the deeper you swim, the harder it gets.

Super-Speed: Fast movement causes super-speed when a bright tail trails the turtle. During super-speed the turtle is invincible and deals damage to enemies on contact.

Trash: groups of trash can be shot to spawn power-ups.

• Ocean trash (plastic bottles)
  • If all plastic bottles in a group are shot, a random power-up will spawn.
• Sky trash (satellite/space debris etc)
  • 5 colors/shapes of debris
  • If all debris of one type are shot, spawns a corresponding power-up

Power-ups:

• Air Bubble: fill air meter and expand max air capacity for duration of current level.
• Super Star: gain invincibility (also damage enemies on contact) while flashing yellow (super-speed without the speed)
• Apple: no energy loss while flashing a dark brown (gotta fix the color!)

• Bullet String: increase bullet fire rate while flashing green
• Question Mark: spawn random above power-up

Stars: Remnant from earlier design. Collect for points. Stars collected from the ocean floor give the most points. Will probably change dramatically or disappear.

Points: Currently the only way to spawn health plants and recover health. Points are currently associated with the concept: leave no trace. Thus, removing foreign or polluting things from the ocean/environment will give you points. These are:

• Shooting trash (ocean and sky) - 25 points
• Delivering UFO parts - 100 points
• Collecting stars (again this needs work, at a minimum thematically)
  • in ocean - 10 points
  • on ocean floor - 100 points
  • in sky - 20 points

Can you beat all 4 levels? How many attempts?

I'm seeking feedback. Please let me know in the comments what you like, don't like, what works and what doesn't.  All thoughts welcome.

Thanks for playing!