8/23/23 - Imagine if you will... having ADHD, I know it's not very hard to do, I'd wager a large number of people, especially gamers, summer from it, myself included. The reason I ask that is because this game was borne of ADHD. My coworkers and I were talking and I can't remember what about but for some reason I was thinking about games with accessibility.
Mobile games for example are excellent at drawing in games with certain inabilities due to a large number only needing a single finger to play. Unfortunately this does have certain limitations, these players are unable to play action games to a degree because of complicated button inputs and so forth. Hell, so few games on even the Nintendo Switch could be played with a single hand on a joycon controller held vertically, leading players to either adapt or ignore.
But why should the players have to adapt to games when developers should consider all that might player their game and create adaptations in game for everyone else.
Case and point: Bayonetta 2. While the game series is lauded for its over the top combat and combo systems and depending on who you are, it's mature imagery (though I'm more of a fan of its monsters being more biblically correct in the most meme worthy of fashions)... it's also just as equally praised for it accessibility features. It's very colorblind friendly but also featured a One Button combat mode. This transforms the game to being incredibly inclusive and as a few articles have pointed out, isn't very expensive to adapt for if it is considered early on in development.
All of this is to say, this concept of adaptability crossed my ADHD mind with another thought: Call of Duty Zombies.
Long ago when I exclusively played games on my Nintendo Wii, Call of Duty: World at War came out, a barebones port that featured limited multiplayer modes. I was immediately hooked. Aiming with the Wii Remote and sniping was incredibly satisfying. Needless to say, when the follow up sequel, Black Ops, came out - I was the only one at the midnight launch at GameStop getting it for the Wii. In fact, most people there didn't even know there was a Wii Version.
It was one of the few games I played for 12 hours straight and I have incredibly fond memories of playing it and zombies and everything on it. Outside of the lack of DLC, it was the very same game as Black Ops that everyone else played, but you could hold the Wii Remote sideways to rotate your gun to pretend to be a gangster.
Anyway, this is all to say that I started brainstorming how accessible you could make Call of Duty Zombies.
Certainly you could maybe make an endless rail shooter with movement options similar to the big Dino boss fights from the Jurassic Park 3 arcade shooter.... Actually that's not a bad idea lol... maybe combine it with a Time Crisis cover system too!
Anyway, my first thought was, what about a top down shooter? In my mind, I was trying to map everything you would need at its core to just a mouse and 2 buttons. But that wouldn't be enough for me. There was a way to make the experience more authentic: split perspective.
What I came up with was having a top down point of view for movement. Holding down the left mouse button would have the player move towards the cursor as you hold the button down, but then right clicking would transition the player into a first person perspective. This would allow the player the option to explore the map and actually really aim. This increases the likeness to CoD Zombies while allowing players to move, aim and shoot with just two button presses.
So for now, the concept is born and development initiated. Time to get my good 'friend and 'co-developer' - 'Bob'* on the line to help me.
*read as ChatGPT
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Zombies and the One Hand Army - Dev Logs
Não FicçãoThis is a dev log for the hybrid 2D/3D game Zombies and the One Hand Army - referred to as ZOHA. This will be generally told in the style of a diary with dates and my thoughts, not as an actual novel. ZOHA was imagined as a 'What If' type of game...
