PROPOSAL

Play as One Noun, Every Day, Forever, in an action rogue-lite game developed in collaboration with Nouns and Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult to be released on Steam/PC!

TL;DR

We are asking for $75,000 to fund the first 3-months of production for our indie Nouns game. Check out our playable demo here (use Safari for MacOS users): NounsTown Demo

PROLIFERATION

Our proposal aims to proliferate Nouns by focusing on a specific target market of the PC gaming community that is interested in indie games, specifically the rogue-lite genre. A rogue-lite indie game provides a compelling opportunity for Nouns to enter the gaming sector due to the following reasons:

Rising Popularity

• Indie developers have had incredible success in recent years due to their ability to design innovating and creative new games that AAA studios often avoid
• Developers have gained access to multiple mass distribution platforms such as Steam, Nintendo Switch, Itch.io, and Epic Games to reach a wide audience
• Available resources and advancements in game development have provided a landscape for small teams, or even individual developers, to produce games with a powerful cultural impact and longevity

Lower Risk Entry to Gaming

• We conceptualized the game design to ensure as much value and replay-ability while maintaining a reasonable scope of work and longer-term scalability
• Our proposal provides for a phased funding and development approach to ensure a transparent production process, opportunities to receive community feedback, and provide multiple tiers of content
• We will use Steam as our distribution platform to launch the game; however, we will explore porting the game to Nintendo Switch after the initial launch and financial considerations

The Charm of Pixel Art

• Our art team collectively has over 30 years of pixel art experience and will design a game aesthetic that will resonate with indie gamers and pixel art enthusiasts
• Pixel art games have had tremendous success with nearly 13,000 games available on Steam. Some household names including Stardew Valley, Shovel Knight, Celeste, Terraria, Hyper Light Drifter, Enter the Gungeon, Octopath Traveler, and Baba is You
• Our game will showcase many different pixel art styles including our modern aesthetic gameplay, retro style UI and game map, and high resolution portraits

Creative Commons

• All of the art and animations that we produce during development will be open-source and available to the community to use!
• After development, we will consider making the game open-source to collaborate with game developers and artists to contribute new content

GAME OVERVIEW

Game Engine

The game will be developed using Godot 4, a free and open-source game development engine!

Genre

Rogue-Lite The key feature of a Rogue-Lite genre is a game loop that results in permadeath. Each time a player begins their attempt or run, they will either defeat the final boss or die trying. A Rogue-Lite game generally involves some permanent progression that takes place outside of the run; usually in the form of upgraded weapons, statistics, abilities, or skill trees.

Bullet Hell Bullet Hell combat mechanics emphasize complex bullet patterns for the player to navigate and dodge. Our bullet hell game will be designed as a twin stick shooter where the player is on a flat plane with a top-down perspective. They will then use one joystick to control the player and the other joystick to control the direction of shooting, or for the real ones, mouse for shooting and keyboard for movement!

Non-Linear Progression One of the unique selling points of our Rogue-Lite game is that it will have Non-Linear progression. The two main features to highlight in this design include a unique map that is generated each run and the freedom for the player to decide their order of progression. Each location will have distinct characteristics that the Player may take advantage of depending on their weapon selection and upgrade composition.

Inspiration Enter the Gungeon, Hades, Risk of Rain 2, Nuclear Throne, Vampire Survivors

Story

Welcome to the world of Nouns Town, a charming community nestled amidst pixelesque landscapes. The citizens of Nouns Town are visionaries that seek to build a spectacular new world as seen through a new type of lens, Noggles! These Noggles may look like quirky little glasses, but they empower the wearer to harness the boundless energy within themselves.

But an ominous cloud is forming over Nouns Town. The malignant Lich King has arrived with an army of shadowy minions to seize these Noggles and exploit their power to build their own evil empire. Nouns Town desperately needs a hero to put an end to the invasion!

Primary Game Mode: One Noun, Every Day, Forever

• Play as a new Nouns character every rolling 24-hour period beginning with Noun #1 and all Nouns that follow
• Every player will attempt the daily run with the same weapon, world map, upgrade choices, and enemy spawns
• The map seed will change each day along with the playable character
• Compete against all other players on the leaderboard for the fastest clear time
• All daily winners will secure their place in the game’s history!

Traditional Game Mode: Protonoun

Play as the Protonoun in a traditional rogue-lite game mode

• Select your starting weapon and begin your run in a unique generative map
• Gain Upgrades as you progress through each room of enemies
• Search for two hidden keys to unlock each stage Boss
• Encounter NPCs and Events as you explore the map
• Complete achievements during your run to unlock new content
• Defeat the final boss, the Lich King, to beat the game

Weapons

The player will begin each run by selecting a single weapon type. As they progress through the game, their weapon gets upgraded to powerful new tiers. New weapons are unlocked through an achievements system and provide diverse play styles and synergies, for example:

• Sniper Rifles - Slow fire rate and reload rate, but high single target damage
• Shotguns - high close range damage, but wide bullet spread at long range
• Rocket and Grenade Launchers - significant area of effect damage, but slow reload speed and fire rate
• Assault rifles - higher ammo capacity and fire rate, but less damage per bullet

Sample Weapons:

Upgrades

As the player clears each room, they are rewarded a pair of Noggles to return to their rightful owner and gain a new weapon modifier. Each upgrade is inspired by various characters from the Nouns collection. Early concepts include:

• Lightning Bolt Noun unlocks chain lightning
• Basketball Noun unlocks bouncing bullets
• Popsicle Noun unlocks frost bullets
• Pencil Noun unlocks piercing bullets
• Chipboard Noun unlocks spark aura
• Baseball Noun unlocks curving bullets

Player upgrades each have multiple tiers of strength. Further, different combinations of upgrades will create fun synergies and provide a unique gameplay experience each run. Unique and innovative upgrades will be explored during game development.

Minions and Bosses

Minions and Bosses will be based on the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult: Forgotten Souls collection. All minions will be designed to have a diverse range of attack styles and bullet patterns. Early attack style concepts include melee, burst range, sniper range, summoners, and complex bullet patterns for elite minions.

We will use rare NFTs from the Forgotten Souls collection as our Stage Bosses and the Lich King as our final boss. Our first Boss engagement will be designed and implemented in Phase I of production.

Sample Minion Designs:

Map and Room Design

With the game’s setting taking place in Nouns Town, our protagonist will progress through the map to clear each location of the Forgotten Souls. As mentioned in the Genre section above, our map and game loop will have a Non-Linear design. The design will have the following characteristics:

Unique Generative Maps

• Each run will generate a new Nouns Town map seed with approximately 30 - 45 Locations, 2 Stage Boss chambers, and 1 Final Boss chamber
• The Player will have the freedom to decide which locations to clear first

NPC and Event Rooms

• We will include friendly NPCs and locations to provide healing, potential upgrades, and/or narrative progression
• Additionally, we are exploring various Event Rooms that occur random times throughout each run that provide new challenges for the player

Room Architecture

• We will design a large library of Locations and Rooms that the map generator will pull from to maintain a unique and diverse world for each play through
• Room types within each location will have consistent thematic designs to provide new challenges and allow the player to associate location aesthetics to gameplay characteristics

Room Decorations

• We will produce a library of tile sets, decorations, barriers, and destructible objects to fill each room with a fun and unique personality inspired by Nouns
• We will mix and match each room’s architecture to various aesthetics to give each room a unique personality and provide diversity between each run

Sample assets:

Sound Design

Full sound design will include sound effects and an original soundtrack. We aim to capture a combination of playful comic-like sound effects paired with a sound track inspired by hip-hop and funk instrumentals. We are in discussion with a number of experienced sound designers that are interested in joining the team later in development.

PRODUCTION STATUS

Pre-Production Complete - Phase 0: Design, Prototype, and Art Style

Our team began production in July 2023 and have established the game design document, art and animation style, game framework and systems, and our initial prototype. To date, we have completed the following tasks:

• Art assets and concepts
  • Protonoun Player Character
  • Concept enemy minions (including walk, idle, and attack animations)
  • Concept weapon types each with 3 upgrade tiers
  • Environment tile sets
  • Upgrade card UI concept
  • Placeholder UI/UX elements
• Initial Godot framework and systems for combat gameplay features
  • Player character animation
  • Initial movement dash ability
  • Two weapons implemented for testing
  • Six player upgrades
  • Prototype testing environment

FUNDING REQUEST

Current Funding Request: $75,000

Phase I: Core Game Loop and Systems Framework 3 months (est. Nov 2023 - Jan 2024)

• Develop systems for game mechanics and gather feedback
• Establish core game loop with hub, map locations, and boss encounter
• Continue art and animation design for player character, enemy minions, environments, and UI/UX
• Design mechanics, aesthetic, and environment for the first Boss encounter
• Private alpha testing for Nouns Community
• Marketing
  • Establish Social Media presence
  • Steam Page
  • Teaser Trailer
  • Project update for community

Future Funding Request: $300,000

Phase II: Detailed Design and Production Additional 9 Months (est. Feb 2024 - Oct 2024)

• Godot Development
• Room and Level Design
• Art production and polish
• Sound Design
• Initial Testing, Balancing, and Quality Assurance
• Marketing
  • $75,000 budget based on 25% of production costs
  • Social Media
  • Indie Game Publications

Future Funding Request: $225,000

Phase III: Optimal Content and Game Launch Additional 6 months (est. Nov 2024 - Apr 2024)

• Expand Weapons, Upgrades, Achievements, and Environments
• Additional Boss Encounters and Events
• Game Mode: a Noun a Day
• Localization
  • Translate and adapt game to popular foreign markets (i.e. Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian)
• Final Testing, Balancing, and Quality Assurance
• Marketing
  • Additional $75,000 budget
  • Launch and Gameplay Trailer
  • Pursue influential Content Creator(s)
• Game Launch

REVENUE SHARE

We will establish a structure revenue share agreement to distribute among NounsDAO, the art and development team, content creators, and licensing agreements with the Forgotten Souls for characters used in-game.

The exact distribution percentages will be reviewed and determined during discussions with our internal team, key stakeholders, and representatives from Nouns Community. We will provide specific details in the the Phase II Proposal.

COMMUNITY IDEAS

To maximize the proliferation of Nouns into the world, this game should be packed with the Nouns personality. And to do that, we need your help! The foundation and overall vision of the game is complete, but we have a ton of room to incorporate the most Nounish ideas that you can think of. Please take a few moments to complete our Google Form below to provide any fun ideas that you would like us to consider during development! Google Form: Ideas and Feedback

TEAM

The Pixel Shop is an independent Art and Game Development studio founded in March 2022. We are a team of four talented artists and developers with over 30 years of art and game development experience, collectively. We are an entirely bootstrapped studio that established our roots by animating full NFT collections into pixel sprites to integrate in metaverse projects. We are also the art team behind an upcoming Web3 game, Battle for Goblin Town, developed by Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult.

Battle for Goblin Town - On-chain strategy game inspired by Settlers of Catan - Coming Soon

CyberBrokers - Animated derivative with 4 directional sprites, over 800 individual trait designs, and environmental walk previews - April 2023

Moonbirds - Animated derivative with 4 directional walk and idle sprites - Coming Soon

Doodles - 10k animated derivative with 2 directional sprites - April 2022