Delivery Deadline
Delivery Deadline
Summary
Tagline - Delivery deadline is an exciting memory, race against the clock game. The goal is to memorise orders from customers, race through traffic to reach them and deliver the correct order.
Delivery deadline is a single player, 2d top down game for PC and IOS, it will be released on steam, the epic games store, and the app store.
The players will take on the role of a delivery driver, memorising orders, then avoiding cars on the road while driving to the customer, once they have reached the customer, they must then recall the correct items they ordered from 8 choices, they must do this before time runs out.
The more consecutive orders the player gets correct the more Delivery Dollars they get when they complete the delivery.
Core Game Loop
-Memorise items
-Avoid cars
-Recall items
The player gets given 3 (or 4, or 5 depending on the difficulty setting the player selects) items to deliver, these items appear as an image and its name underneath (a can be seen in figure 1) they have 5 seconds to look at them.
Then the 35 second countdown timer starts, and the player takes control of a van on a road with 3 lanes and must avoid all the other cars on the road using the WASD keys to move in and out of lanes, each round the player will face around 10 cars coming at them, and each time the player hits a car 1 second is taken off the timer.
Once the player reaches the customer, they must recall the items they were shown at the start by selecting the right image and name from 8 random item cards. The more consecutive deliveries the player gets correct the more Delivery Dollars they get per delivery.
Compulsion Loop
Deliver items and get points to upgrade the delivery van
Trigger: External- push notifications and adverts on YouTube and steam popup ads
Action: The player will memorise and deliver items
Variable Reward: The player has a certain percent chance of earning one of 5 items used to upgrade their delivery van.
Investment: The player uses the points from the delivery to upgrade their van
LPM Loop
The games LPM consists of players retaining the memory of the items they are delivering while avoiding cars and listening to catchy music, the player will have to learn to not be distracted by the music and cars in order to remember easier.
Gameplay
The player starts looking at 3 cards (or 4/5 depending on the difficulty level) with the image of the item and its name with the background of a shop, as can be seen in figure 3. The player has 5 seconds to memorise these cards before they’re sent to the next stage of the level.
Once the next stage starts the 35 seconds timer starts, if this timer gets to 0 before the player has completed the delivery, then they fail the level. The timer is 35 seconds for all 3 difficulty levels.
The next stage is the driving part of the game, the player gets a top down view of a motorway with 3 lanes. The player starts in the middle lane, and the other cars that populate the road will spawn on all 3 lanes and the player has to avoid them, the time this takes depends on how many speed upgrades the player has and how much they slow down, but with the base level van it should take the player around 25-30 seconds.
Once the player completes the driving, they are shown a screen with all of the item cards (a list of all items can be found in a table in the items section) and they have however long is left on the timer to select the correct items, if the player selects them in time, then they complete the delivery and get 20 Delivery Dollars. If they don’t manage to do it in time, then they fail the level and start again and lose their delivery streak and the points bonus that brings.
Demographics
The profile target audience of the game are people above the age of 12 of either sex, the reason being younger children will find remembering harder, and this demographic will be more susceptible to external triggers through ads on YouTube and other social sites.
The psychology of the demographic we’re aiming at are those who like memory games or games where there’s time pressure.
Diegesis
The diegesis of the game is built on delivery, this is what the game centres around, everything the player does is based on delivering items and the sound of mechanics of the game are designed to either help or hinder the player in this goal.
Controls
PC
W
Speed up van
A
Turn van left
S
Slow down van
D
Turn van right
Left mouse button
Select
IOS
Controls will be simpler for IOS as there will be buttons on the bottom left of the screen to control direction and speed up and slow down buttons on the bottom right, to select the player will just tap the screen on what they want to select i.e., the image of what they’re delivering.
Difficulty
There will be three difficulty levels in the game, these will be easy, normal, and hard.
The only thing the difficulty changes is how many items a player has to remember; on the easy difficulty the player will have to remember 3 orders from cards they’re shown. For the normal difficulty the player will have to remember 4 items, and for the hard difficulty the player will remember 5.
For all 3 difficulties the player will have 35 seconds from when they see the order to avoid all of the cars on the road and deliver the order.
Items
The selection of items that the player can be asked to deliver are:
Bread
Apple
Orange
Banana
Pear
Milk
Chocolate
Chips
Crackers
Rice
Curry
Noodles
Butter
Cereal
Crumpets
Pancakes
Grapes
Ice Cream
Yoghurt
Mango
Squash
Bagel
Water Bottles
Pasta
Chicken
Beef
Sausage
Apricots
Salad
Potato
These items will be randomised each time the player is given the delivery order, this creates replayability as each round will have different orders. As well as monthly updates that will add more items, in order to keep the game fresh for the player.
Delivery Dollars/ Rewards
The Delivery Dollars in the game represent the pay-out from the players delivery.
The base pay-out for each round is 20 points, but each consecutive delivery the player gets correct adds 2 Delivery Dollars to each pay-out.
1st successful delivery
20
2nd consecutive successful delivery
22
3rd consecutive delivery
24
4th consecutive delivery
26
Etc.
The player also gets 5 Delivery Dollars every 24 hours upon opening the game. They also get 5 Delivery Dollars for registering to put their fastest delivery times and successful delivery streaks on the online leader board, this works as even if the player spends the delivery dollars they earn, the leader board counts them, so it will be a total of all money the player has earned throughout their time playing, The top 3 on the leader board every month get a special gold delivery van for hard difficulty, silver for medium and bronze for easy, there will be a monthly leaderboard for this, and an all-time leaderboard for competitive players to rank themselves against other players.
Variable Rewards
Item
% Chance of dropping + Average rounds before drop
Pistons
18
6 Rounds
Gears
12
8 Rounds
Metal
25
4 Rounds
Paint
20
5 Rounds
Tyres
15
7 Rounds
Nothing
10
10 Rounds
With these items and Delivery Dollars the player can upgrade two items:
1) Engine Upgrade
- Requires:
3 Metal 1 Gear 2 Pistons 300 Delivery Dollars
This will take the player 32 rounds making up around 18.5 minutes, there are 15 upgrade levels for the engine, each level requires +1 metal gear and pistons and +50 delivery dollars
2) New Van
- Requires:
2 Metal 2 Paint 1 Tyres 200 Delivery Dollars
This will take the player 25 rounds making up around 14.5 minutes, there are 20 upgrades, each costing the same
Upgrades
With the money that the player gets from completing deliveries they can upgrade their delivery van. For 300 Delivery Dollars the player can buy an engine upgrade which gets them +1 speed for the van. The base speed of the van is x0.5 the speed of the cars that spawn on the road.
The speed upgrade only affects the player, so as the player upgrades their van, it gets faster which helps with beating the timer, but they have to react quicker to other cars to avoid them, this balances out the advantage the player gets from a faster van with the additional challenge of the aforementioned reaction time.
Another upgrade the player can get for 20 Delivery Dollars is a car shield, this protects the van from 1 car, preventing them from getting the -1 second penalty that hitting a car costs the player, this upgrade is one use only but can be bought every round.
One upgrade the player can get is the extra life upgrade for 30 delivery dollars, this gives the player one life so they can get one delivery item wrong without failing the level.
For 200 Delivery Dollars and the items mentioned in the last section the player can buy a New Van, which lets them change the colour of the delivery van, this is to freshen up the look of the van in case the player starts to get bored of looking at the same van.
The 4th upgrade the player can buy is the music upgrade, there are 4 background pieces of music that the player can choose from, they get the base one at the start, but they can pay 10 Delivery Dollars to change it, this doesn’t permanently unlock the song as each time they want to select a new one it’s 10 Delivery Dollars even if they’ve previously bought the music.
Music Upgrade
10 Delivery Dollars
Car Shield
20 Delivery Dollars
Extra Life
30 Delivery Dollars
Engine Upgrade
300 Delivery Dollars
New Van
200 Delivery Dollars
Rules
The game has some core rules that are important to specify:
If the timer runs out before the player has selected all 3 (or 4/5 depending on difficulty) items then they lose, and the game goes back to the main menu.
For every car the player hits when they’re driving the van, they lose 1 second on the timer.
For every item that the player selects wrong out of all of the cards when they’re delivering the order at the end of a round, they lose 1 second on the timer.
Once the player has selected all the correct items, they complete the round and get their Delivery Dollars.
Environments
The game is split in to 3 environments, the first is the shop the player starts in, this is where they get the orders from, the player will see the front of the store, it’s a classic town shop with a canopy above it, it will be partially blocked out by the 3 (4, or 5) items the player must remember.
The second environment is the road, this will be the top-down view of a motorway with 3 lanes, all cars will be driving in the same direction, and the player will start in the middle lane, this is where the player will have to avoid the other cars.
These cars start off at the same speed as the player, but as they upgrade their van and increase its speed the cars become slower, this helps outrun them alongside, but if they spawn in front of the player then they’ll have to react quicker to move out of the way.
The third and final environment is the clients house where the player delivers the items, this will be a typical redbrick house you’d find in a town or a city outskirt, although much of it will be blocked by all the images of items that the player must choose the correct orders from.
HUD
On their screen for both PC and IOS the players will see the countdown timer on the top left to tell them how long they have left. On the top right they will see their money balance to show them how much money they have to incentivise them when they’re close to affording an upgrade. The top middle will be a task counter to show how many items they have to remember, and how many they’ve got right i.e., 1/3 if they’ve selected one correct item.
Visual Style
The game will be a 2D cartoon style, the same as figure 4, with a top-down camera when driving, as can be seen in figure 5 The road and background can be done by drawing or tracing in photoshop. And the delivery van can be traced, or we could use an asset from a website like Kenney. In terms of animation, all that is really needed is the van moving left to right, and moving forward fast and slow, as well as just moving cars for the other cars.