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 deliver a polished and playable vertical slice for our indie Nouns game developed in Godot 4. We will also explore the game mechanics and creative direction with the Nouns community to discover product-market fit.

Play our pre-production demo here!

A Vertical Slice of One Noun, Every Day

The One Noun, Every Day game mode will be the hook and anchor behind this game. We want to re-imagine the continuity and diversity of Nouns through the lens of a dynamic and captivating game for the masses.

Just as each blockchain hash determines the traits for each noun, every day, we will use a game seed to generate new elements for a each game, every day. These changing elements include Nouns equipped with fun and diverse items, a generative world map populated with vibrant environments, random upgrades available to select from, and enemy minions and bosses you must battle to win. Every player will have a 24 hour rolling period to defeat each version of the game. This innovative mechanic has the potential to fuel a social and competitive gaming culture due to the following reasons:

• Replayability - Optimize gameplay strategies through trial and error as you explore new characters and maps
• Progression - Unlock new content and playable characters to use in the “Classic Mode” by defeating the game and a robust achievement system
• Competition - Compete against all other players for the fastest clear time, and more importantly, bragging rights!
• Game Metas - Discover unpredictable metas in a dynamic Nounish world

Funding Details and Deliverables

We are asking for $75,000 to develop a polished and playable vertical slice of the One Noun, Every Day game loop to demonstrate our intended player experience.

This funding request provides for a $65,000 production budget (approximately 1,500 hours) and a $10,000 marketing budget, over an approximately 3-month period. Key features required to produce this vertical slice include player character design, items and upgrades, environment design, sound design, UI/UX, and a single boss encounter. Each feature will go through design and documentation, art and animation, programming and development, sound design, and testing and quality assurance, as applicable. The deliverables and estimated allocation are as follows:

• 1 Boss Encounter - 20 percent or 300 hours
• Generative Map and Environment Assets - 20 percent or 300 hours
• 7 Items and 7 Upgrades - 15 percent or 225 hours
• 7 Rotating Nouns Characters - 15 percent or 225 hours
• Sound design for completed features - 10 percent or 150 hours
• Functional UI/UX for Menus and Gameplay - 10 percent or 150 hours
• Comprehensive Game Design Document - 10 percent or 150 hours

We have allocated a marketing budget of $10,000 to produce the following deliverables:

• Branding and Marketing Assets
• Establish Social Media presence and Steam Page
• Professional Teaser Trailer

Creative Direction

Nouns

Our game embraces a clash of two starkly contrasting worlds. On one side, the Nounish personality will be at the core of the player character, the items and upgrades you acquire during each run, and NPCs you discover over time. These elements will be designed to permeate Nounish personality through vibrant colors, joyful energy, and whimsical ideas.

Items

We are exploring ideas that are “outside of the box” and consistent with the outlandish and diversely strange Nouns world.

Upgrades

As the player clears each room, they are rewarded a pair of Noggles that unlocks a powerful new upgrade to use during the run. Players will experiment with different combinations of upgrades to create fun synergies and provide a unique gameplay experience each run. Each upgrade is inspired by various characters from the Nouns collection.

Forgotten Souls

And on the other side, you'll uncover the corrupt Forgotten Souls that have crossed into the Nouniverse upon discovering the power of Noggles. The Souls are holding Nouns captive in their inanimate forms and using the power from the stolen Noggles to convert the Nouniverse into their own shadowy realm. The Souls will serve as the enemy minions, bosses, and antagonist of our game, designed with contrasting dark personalities and colors.

Minions

All minions will be designed to showcase their haunting personalities through fantastical and diverse character design, animations, and attack styles. The contrasting nature of the minions will provide for an aesthetic design that emphasizes readability and a visual feeling of cleansing the corruption from Nouns Town as the player progresses.

Bosses

Our boss encounters thrive to be one of the more memorable experiences that you will encounter in our game. Our bosses will be inspired by rare Forgotten Souls characters but have our own stylistic flare. These boss encounters will be visually stunning and paired with cohesive game play mechanics that immerse and challenge the player.

Environment

The collision of these two distinct moods creates a captivating experience. Each run will begin as a corrupt Nouniverse that has taken over by the Souls. As the player progresses through the map, the corruption is pushed back and the vibrant Nounish world is slowly restored!

We’ll design Nounish locations with their own distinct aesthetics and corresponding play styles. Each location on the map will go through a similar design process and produce the following deliverables:

• Concept Design - Establish the location’s identity with clearly defined characteristics
• Map Assets - Represent each location by a low resolution design on the map
• Tile Sets - Outfit the walls, floors, and objects within the rooms of each location. The following tile set was used in our demo and will receive a Nounish update:
• Decorations and Objects - Fill each room with decorations for personality and destructible objects for an interactive setting

Creative Commons

All of the art and animations that we produce will be open-source and available for anyone to use!

Future Vision

The goal of this proposal is to “follow the fun” through addicting game play and Nounish creative expressions. However, we have a long term vision to produce and distribute a fully fleshed out Nouns indie game.

Additional Classic Mode

Our core game loop will be the One Noun, Every Day game mode. However, as the player character and map remain constant in this game mode, we also plan to release a Classic Mode to serve as a more traditional rogue-lite focused on randomness and meta progression, or progression that exists outside of regular gameplay. In this mode, no two runs will be the same as a fresh new map is generated with each play through.

But there’s also significant depth beyond the randomness. This mode will be accompanied with a robust achievement system that challenges the player to unlock exciting new items, upgrades, and cosmetics.

Organic Growth

During development, we’ll maintain a steady pipeline of project updates, promotional content, and social engagement to generate organic growth. Additionally, we plan to attend major game development conventions such as GDC, PAX, and Gamescon to engage with our community in person.

Game Distribution

We will use Steam as our primary distribution platform to release the game. Steam provides access to the largest PC gaming community, as well as extensive marketing and analytics features. We will explore porting the game to Nintendo Switch post-release to reach a wider audience.

Collaboration

Nouns Community

We are committed to an open and inclusive collaboration process throughout production. We will regularly engage with select community members to explore creative discussions, validate game design concepts, and explore marketing opportunities. Our goal is to create an immersive game that represents the Nounish identity and resonates with both the community and the player.

Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult

The game will be in collaboration with our friends from the Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult. Their team is well-respected and produce engaging and high-quality products and experiences. This collaboration brings promotional support from both their community and team’s established network within the gaming, content creation, and entertainment industries. This partnership presents an opportunity to elevate our game, expand its reach, and enhance the prospect for breakout success.

Nouns Esports

We will collaborate with Nouns Esports to generate excitement and promotional content with the game launch. This partnership will explore ideas to engage the Nouns gaming community primarily through streaming, competitions, and giveaways.

Why a Nounish indie game?

A rogue-lite indie game provides a compelling opportunity for Nouns to enter the gaming sector:

Creative Expression

Indie games provide for a perfect landscape to build a Nounish world complete with innovative game mechanics that are complimented with vibrant aesthetics and visual representation. We aim to populate our world with original Nouns characters, an outlandish environment, and charming storytelling to engage players and cultivate a connection to Nouns culture.

Strategic Advantages

Our small indie team provides several advantages including streamlined communication, transparency, adaptability, and a strong team synergy. Yet, while being a small team, we have access to powerful platforms such as Godot for development, Steam for distribution, and social media and Discord for our community. Our game is thoughtfully designed to pack a punch with addictive gameplay mechanics, engaging progression and replayability, and long-term scalability and new content. We’re able to accomplish all of this within a reasonable scope and production budget, and without sacrificing on the game’s entertainment or aesthetics.

Genre

Our genre of choice may be a mouthful (Non Linear Action Rogue-Lite Bullet Hell…) but it’s a great platform for a Nouns game. The generative rogue features share a strong parallel with the Nounish identity; bullet hells offer replayability. We have described the key features of each sub-genres and the games that inspire us below:

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 meta progression that takes place outside of the run; usually in the form of upgraded items, 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.

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.

Inspiration

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

Why The Pixel Shop?

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. Our team has experience producing artwork with major indie game studios; developing game engines, commercial software, and game mods; and managing large scope projects through completion.

As a team, we recently led the creative and art direction for Battle for Goblin Town, an upcoming on-chain “Settlers of Catan” style game developed by Forgotten Runes Wizard’s Cult. During this project, we designed and produced all of the art assets, UI/UX, gameplay trailer.

We also just completed our latest Moonbirds project which demonstrates our creative and technical capabilities, and shares many parallels with this Nouns proposal. For this project, we animated all 10,000 Moonbirds as pixel sprites and introduced a mini-game as a proof-of-work to showcase how these sprites can be used in indie-game development. All of the artwork produced for this project is cc0 for others to enjoy and build on. Check out our Mini-Game and GitHub repository.

We are driven by our passion and commitment to releasing exciting pixel art games. Thank you for the opportunity and please provide us with any feedback that you have!