148 The Experts

A comic book style story about a group of people who are the top experts in their respective and unlikely fields. The game manifests as a 6-player online or local experience, with a cooperative-only main story. The gameplay is a mix of the adventure style of Skylanders / Disney Infinity with elements of the 3D Gauntlet games and the cooperation of Dungeon Defenders and the Lara Croft cooperative digital games.

Instead of gaining new relevant abilities throughout the game (as Experts are in fact, already experts at what they do), the player begins to learn abilities that were previously used exclusively by her comrades. Specifically, the game analyzes which players work together most often, and synergy is created between them. This allows them to learn each others’ more advanced abilities, and increase their bond. However, deep synergy with a character comes at the sacrifice of gaining abilities from other players. This system would hopefully encourage players to try and constantly change up their strategies and work with all the different characters during combat and adventuring.

Puzzle design would be extremely intricate, tight, and smart. The puzzles would need to be designed to be solved by many combinations of different sets of the 6 players. At some points during the game’s story, it will make sense for the team to split up in various ways (similar to, but much less arbitrary than, the Gears of War series). Sometimes three teams of 2, sometimes two teams of 3, and occasionally individual group members or uneven teams might adventure separately. The puzzles need to be designed to accommodate all of the potential pairings. This may end up creating puzzles (and puzzle solving mechanics) similar to those found in the Trine series.

#action-game, #adventure-game, #co-op-game, #social-game