Similar Games in terms of Gameplay

The game-play style for the game that I have designed fits into the "side-scrolling/beat 'em up" genre. During my research into these, I have created a small checklist that contains the major:

• This style of game is almost always played within a 2D environment
• Players move their characters to the right so that they can progress to the next area
• The player must defeat all enemies in one area before moving to the next area of the level
• In most games, a flashing symbol appears to tell the players that they can advance
• The HUD (Heads Up Display) will always show the characters life bar, how many lives the character has and what the player's current score is
• The players will usually have to defeat a boss enemy before moving to the next level
• The characters will usually be able to use a variety of attacks (which may also include special attacks)

I have decided to implement these into my game, as it will make it more relative to the genre and also may mean that the target audience will be able to recognise the genre better. While researching into this genre, I found several real life examples and specific guidelines that they all seem to follow. The first example is a famous game created by the large gaming industry Sega in 1991. It was called 'Streets of Rage'.

Streets of Rage is a game that seemed to appeal to teenagers at the time of it's release because, at the time, 2D fighting games were one of the more popular styles of games. During my research, I found that the most popular games produced at the time of this game's release tended to be side-scrolling games and shooter games. Because these genres were popular among gamers at the time, this game caught on fairly quickly.

The second game that I looked into for similarity was a more recent game. 'Ragnarok Battle Offline' is an independently-made game created by the Japanese game company French-Bread in 2007.

It's characters, setting and style is based off of the famous Korean RPG called 'Ragnarok Online'. The game is also animated very smoothly, which makes the gameplay much smoother. Because of it's unique art and animation style, this game looks very colourful and gives the gameplay a generally happy mood. This is very uncommon in many other games of this genre, because the majority of the other games contain very dark colours. This in turn gives some games of this genre a more serious mood. Another important element about this game is that the characters can level up, in which the players can choose specific skills to make them stronger. This relates to the RPG style that the game was based off of, as lots of RPGs allow players to level up their characters.


The third game I looked into for similarity in conventions was a very recent game which was released in 2010. It is another independent game produced by the company Klei Entertainment called 'Shank'.

It is a very good looking game, as the animation is very smooth and it has a 'comic book' style of art, which can make the game look as if it's aimed at mainly teenagers. This is also the more violent of the three games that I analysed, but I decided that my game would not be as violent so that there will be a larger target audience. If a game contains large amounts of gore or harsh violence, the target audience could be much smaller. Usually, if a game contains a 'fantasy' style of violence (i.e. no blood), the game could be played by a slightly younger audience.

Sometimes within gaming, the characters can act as idols for young people. Many gamers have come to idolise a wide variety of video game characters, both good and evil, for many different qualities (i.e. the gamer can relate to the character, the character may have a lovable personality, etc.). One main example of this is Mario (the Super Mario series), who since his creation in 1981 has become a globally famous mascot to the video game company Nintendo. Another example could be that with these games, the target audience could come to idolise the main protagonists because they are trying to fight against evil. This is usually one quality of a main character that brings the target audience to like them. In comparison, one quality that usually brings the target audience to like the villains of games is if they have a comedic or have a funny personality.