Game 2 design process (Part 1)

So I don't have to do a massive catch up for this one, here's the details on my second game of the semester.

The game is required to be of a steampunk genre and with a theme of "rescue". Everything else seems to be up for grabs.

I was actually a bit disappointed by the change as I had an awesome idea for an underwater game. Oh well. It's in my ideas book, now.

Anyway. I've been playing a lot of Bioshock Infinite lately so I had the idea of airships stuck in my head. So I thought it would be kind of cool to do a flying airship game.

I was warned by Mark that having it in an open world would be difficult, but me being stubborn as I am, I really want to go open world!

So, steampunk. Steampunk is essentially stuff that is Victorian and sci-fi at the same time. The thing with steampunk is that it's both grand and grungy simultaneously. There is steam, yes, but there is also gilt. It's a challenge, design wise.

So, steampunk airships, and have to rescue a thing. I'm loathe to do the typical "rescue the girl" because steampunk typically has strong women characters who don't really need rescuing. Also it's been done to bits. Rescue the "thing" though sounds okay.

Anyway, I started concepting a level:

The idea at the moment is to have a massive airship where the player starts, and they need to get to the tower to "rescue the thing". The tower is set in the middle of an endless ocean. The player will be in their own mini airship. The red balloons are enemy turrets. The turrets have a reasonable amount of fire power, but are slow and only have a very limited range of movement. The mini airship will be quite fast and manoeuvrable, and I'm undecided yet as to whether it will have weapons. Once the player has reached the tower, they will pick up the "thing", and then have to return to the massive airship to win.

At the moment I'm leaning towards steampunk airship pirates, most likely as the player (you must go to the tower to "liberate" the booty, arrrr) and the enemy turrets being those of the "establishment".

I'll probably set it in a massive terrain, build the sides right up so the player can't fly out of them and a cap on the top as a roof, put in an island, build a nice tower on it, and add water for the ocean.

Hopefully it won't be too bad to make!