1

2

Contents

Overview .............................................................................................................................. 3

Blazing Aces Vision ........................................................................................................................ 3

Casual with competitive players in mind ................................................................................ 4

Controls ............................................................................................................................................ 5

Game Design ....................................................................................................................... 6

Game Scope ..................................................................................................................................... 6

Features ............................................................................................................................................ 7

Flight Commands 101 ................................................................................................................... 8

Blazing evolved............................................................................................................................. 11

The World ......................................................................................................................... 13

Style ................................................................................................................................................. 13

Art with a purpose ....................................................................................................................... 14

The Crew ......................................................................................................................................... 15

Setting ............................................................................................................................................. 15

The Team ............................................................................................................................... 17

Designers & Artists ....................................................................................................................... 17

Being the commander .................................................................................... 18

Be the best of the best ................................................................................................................ 18

Marketing & Sales ............................................................................................... 19

Marketing plan .............................................................................................................................. 19

Summary ................................................................................................................................ 19

Closing Thoughts .......................................................................................................................... 19

3

OVERVIEW

“Command your aircrafts to defend your mothership

and crush the mechanical bug invasion.”

Blazing Aces Vision

Blazing Aces is a fast-paced top-down action game where you are the commander of a flying aircraft carrier referred to as the mothership. Under your command you have

various aircrafts, each using unique ways of fighting and flying. Use these aircrafts to

defend your mothership against a mechanical bug invasion. By drawing paths with your

finger or mouse you issue flight orders to your aircrafts. Next plane in line will follow the newly drawn path and destroy any enemy that happens to cross it.

The primary goal of the game is to complete levels and stop the bug invasion. By

completing missions you gain in-game currency that you can use to upgrade your aircrafts or mothership. You can also play various challenges to earn extra rewards and compete

against your friends to get the highest score. The challenge in the game comes from

optimizing your aircrafts’ strengths and weaknesses against the correct enemy type and to draw as accurate flight paths as possible.

Blazing Aces visual style and setting is heavily inspired by Japanese anime, mostly by the

work of Studio Ghibli. This is most notable in the environments and enemy aircrafts. The

general inspiration and atmosphere of the game world is American 1940’s. Think WW2 propeller planes rather than modern jets and stereotypical old school fighter aces with

leather hats and round glasses. The game’s visual style is meant to appeal to a broad

audience. The game is colorful and overall aesthetically pleasing with less focus on

realism. During the game you will fly over calm countrysides, cities under attack and caves

where the bugs originate. As you come closer to the enemy home base, the destruction

escalates and you recognize less and less of the old world.

4

Casual with competitive players in mind

The game is designed with a casual audience in mind, whether it’s people on the go with

their tablet or someone with a couple of minutes to kill by their computer. Therefore all

the maps are designed towards a time box of 4 minutes or less, enabling players to stop

and resume after their own desire.

Blazing Aces combines the strategic elements of Flight Control and Crimson: Steam Pirates

with the action elements of shoot ‘em ups. The gameplay is simple enough for anyone to grasp - using only one input - and the overall difficulty of the game is graspable by the

average casual gamer. For the more competitive players there’s a high score and

challenge system, where you can compete against friends or strangers to earn more in game content.

Based on all of these elements we’re certain Blazing Aces is a game that can be enjoyed by

everyone, however since it’s designed with online experiences in mind we have to aim for a PEGI 12 rating.

5

Controls

As mentioned before there’s only one input to this game, your finger or mouse. Use this

one input to swipe across the screen to issue flight commands.

6

Game DEsign

Game Scope

We estimate the total game time for Blazing Aces to clock in at around 4-6 hours, including

completing the story, all challenges and unlocking all content. Post-production updates

would of course increase the length and replayability of the game.

The production time for the whole game, including the work for the vertical slice, is

estimated to 7 months. This is calculated based on the amount of time it took us to get this

far, so of course it’s more accurate if we were to continue with our team of 5 people. We

would also need the expertise of a programmer, to help out with all the backend and network features for the game. It would also be desirable to hire a QA coordinator to

ascertain the game’s functionality on release.

Blazing Aces is built around a very simple core, our intention was to create an easily scalable project. The core asset list is very short, mainly pilots and aircrafts, enabling us to

focus on making the world more interesting, gameplay balancing and polish, rather than

rushing to get something playable, which is the main reason why this project is plausible.

7

Features

16 unique pilots with an integrated XP and level up system.

16 unique aircrafts spread over 4 different aircraft classes, each with their own

upgrades and weapons.

20 campaign levels used to unfold the epic story of machine insects and their evil intentions of enslaving mankind. This includes 3 boss encounters.

12 super hard challenges to complete and get rewards to aid you in the campaign,

or compete with your friends for the highest score to earn the respect you deserve.

Captivating narrative with plenty of light-hearted humor and goofy characters.

Upgradable Mothership, more HP, stronger Shield and epic weapon systems,

including an automated turret and a doomsday device.

Achievements!

High Score that is shareable on social media, enabling fun and friendly

competitions among friends and strangers.

Cloud save your experience and get a continuous experience between different platforms. Don’t choose between your tablet and PC, use both by connecting your

Microsoft or Facebook account.

8

Flight Commands 101 Core mechanics

Paths: Drawing paths is the absolute essence of the game, the thing you’ll spend most

time doing. As soon as you click or put a finger on the screen a path will initialize, when

released the path is set and the first aircraft in queue will fly to the starting point of the

path and following it. Players can draw as many paths as they have pilots, 4 at most. Some

aircraft classes have special conditions. The juggernaut for example is really fast but it can only fly in straight lines. This is not something the players have to think about when drawing,

since the path is automatically set to a straight line.

HP & Shield: At the very core Blazing Aces is about protecting your mothership, i.e.

keeping its health above zero. Lucky for you the mothership is equipped with two life bars, one for HP (Health Points) and one for the Shield.

The Shield, represented by the blue meter, is your first line of defense. It’s generally

weaker than the actual HP, both in endurance and amount, but it starts to regenerate 5 seconds after it last got hit, meaning it’s theoretically an infinite source of protection.

The HP, red meter, is static (doesn’t regenerate) but refills after each level. Every time you

lose HP, the score multiplier resets which serves two functions. First and foremost it serves

a tactical purpose, i.e. how long you dare wait until you finish off an enemy. Secondly it

helps you keep track of when you take actual damage.

9

Aircrafts: There’s 4 different aircraft classes in the game; dogfighter, destroyer, juggernaut

and minelayer. We’ve tried to make each aircraft unique and better fit for different situations.

The Dogfighter with its two front mounted machine guns excels when there’s a row of

enemies in front of it. Its agility enables it to take down enemies on curved paths as well as

straight. However as soon as the enemies start to spread out, we recommend bringing out

the Destroyer. With its automated turret, it can bring down enemies coming from all

directions, which makes it suitable for clustered or isolated enemies. Both of these aircraft

types are great against smaller enemies like the bugs, but as soon as they increase in size, it’s better to bring out the Juggernaut or Minelayer. The Juggernaut is the most

straightforward aircraft type under your command. It flies straight as an arrow and instead

of weapons, it simply destroys everything in its path. This makes it suitable to take down large enemies, the bigger the better. Last but not least, the Minelayer works great as an

extra defense asset. It deploys small enemy seeking mines and deals splash damage

making it great against enemies clumped together.

10

Enemies: Enemy aircrafts are the only threat in the game at the moment, meaning they’re

the only source of damage infliction. Therefore we created enemies of different sizes and with different roles, again to add to the game’s tactical elements. To help players

understand their basic functionality they’re painted with one of two main colors; red or

blue. This is in correlation to how we present the life bars of the mothership, i.e. blue

enemies inflict more damage to your Shields, red are better against HP. For each enemy

you kill you gain in-game currency, points and XP for your pilots. A general rule of thumb

is, the bigger the enemy the more you get.

Aircraft queue: To enable better tactical support for players, we’ve given them control of

the aircraft queue, i.e. the order of which their planes respond to their drawn paths.

Usability is of course of the essence here as well, meaning we want to make it easy for players to achieve what they want. The quickest way of changing order is to click on the

aircraft image you want to send out and it will be bumped up to first in line. For more hard

core commanders we’ve added support for total customization of the entire order through dragging and dropping.

11

Blazing evolved Secondary mechanics

Scrap: For each enemy killed the player earns in-game currency in the form of scrap. Scrap can be used to build new upgrades for your existing aircrafts or mothership, assemble new

planes altogether, or simply hire new pilots. All upgrades are meant to increase the

player’s customization options to suit their play style and ultimately make it easier to complete levels.

For the mothership that means increasing the HP or Shield bars, decrease the Shields

regeneration delay or simply improve the speed of which it recuperates. You can also make it more endurable in the form of self-defenses such as an automated turret, a shield

boost and a rare weapon that eradicates all the enemies currently on screen.

For your aircrafts upgrades generally means improved weaponry, e.g. more bullets and

better spread for the dogfighter’s machine guns, or more mines for the minelayer.

High score: In Blazing Aces there’s a score system that allows the player to always receive

a unique score for each level. This score is used to determine how much scrap you’ll get at the end of a level but it can also be used to compete with your friends locally, or with

strangers on a global scale.

The high score is based on two types of multipliers, an individual for each aircraft which is hidden for players and a global one present at the top of the screen. Every enemy type has

a base scrap value based on its difficulty.

When an aircraft start a flight its individual multiplier will increase for each kill and the killed enemy’s base value is multiplied. The score is then stored in a temporary score

which will increase as long as the global multiplier is above one. As soon as the aircraft

lands its individual multiplier is reset.

The global multiplier increases (to a maximum of 10) by one for all enemies destroyed and

is reset if no enemy has been killed for 5 seconds. When it is reset the temporary score

accumulated from all aircrafts is multiplied with the current multiplier.

12

Pilots: The primary function of pilots is to enable players to have more aircrafts to choose from before missions. Their real purpose however is to add flavor and increase immersion

to the game. We’re certain that you care more about your team if there are actual people

piloting your aircrafts, plus they help us create more interesting levels. Each pilot has

unique abilities and stats that level up the more you use them in mission. They also have a specific class that corresponds to the different aircrafts classes.

Bosses: Each unique level collection with the same theme ends with a boss battle. Each

boss is different and will challenge the player in different ways than regular enemies, by having their unique attack patterns and defenses. They also have clear weaknesses for

players to take advantage. The main purpose of bosses is to test and develop player’s

skills. They also mean to give a peak in the difficulty curve.

Level progression: When a level is completed new levels are unlocked, sometimes

multiple at a time. Players can then choose in which order they want to complete them,

however they must complete them all in any order to progress in the game. The level

progression is used as a tool to control the pace and narrative of Blazing Aces.

Challenges: Players can at any time choose to play challenges. These are not regular story

driven missions but much harder levels, where you have to complete certain objectives to

complete the level. These can be time trials, survival, trick shoots, etc.

For each completed challenge, players are rewarded with scrap, or in rare cases some

special items, to help them in the campaign. Some of the challenges are designed to be

really hard to appeal to players who have already completed the whole game and are

looking for new goals to complete.

13

THE WORLD

Style

Our main focus for the visual style of the game was to create an aesthetically pleasing

game, using soft and playful colors. Our main source of inspiration comes from the work of Studio Ghibli and their playful characters and environments.

The main problem we pinpointed right from the start was readability. Since Blazing Aces

is a top down game there’s going to be a lot of action in a tightly confined space, the screen can quickly get cluttered. Therefore the environment is very saturated in contrast

to everything else which is brighter to make it stand out.

The keyword when it comes to the art is hand painted. Everything from the 2d character

portraits to texturing work, as well as the particle effects in the game is hand painted,

which brings everything together under the same roof.

There’s 4 different aircraft types in the game; dogfighter, destroyer, juggernaut and

minelayer. Both the pilots and the aircrafts are presented to reflect their unique class. The

dogfighter for example - which is the typical fighter pilot - is drawn like a stereotypical pilot from WW2. Furthermore, to make the player controlled aircrafts different from the

enemies, we chose to have a classical airplane-look to the silhouette with a more colorful

texture palette. The enemies use a darker color palette with one or two string colors. They

are also designed to look more like ancient insect machines, rather than actual airplanes.

14

Art with a purpose

The main focus for the environment was for it to be pleasing to the eye, with low

saturation and simple but beautiful features. The environmental theme also has a second

purpose which is to bring the story and sense of progression forward. The first theme players encounter in the game is a countryside which is very bright and colorful, idyllic

almost. As the game progresses and becomes harder, the art changes to darker themes,

like a defending city by night and finally the home of the bugs; a dark and mysterious

canyon.

Despite the overall theme and genre of the game, Blazing Aces is not a grey and dystopic

game when it comes to its artstyle.

15

Story The world is under attack from an insect-like machine race, spawned from the depth of the

planet. What started out as small attacks in the outskirts of the greater cities quickly

escalated into full-blown war. Humanity put their last hope in fighting aircrafts with aircrafts. So they assembled small carrier vessels and put fearless commanders in charge

of each one. In Blazing Aces you are one of those commanders and throughout the game

your mission is to get to the machines home and obliterate it. At least that’s what you

thought. During the course of the game, you’ll discover a new threat from the underworld, adding reason to the insect machines invasion and opening up possibilities for a sequel.

The Crew

During the course of the game you’ll get introduced to a bunch of characters in the form of

pilots. You can choose freely which ones you’ll want to use for the different missions and

hire new ones if none live up to your demands. All pilots have a common denominator,

they’re all connected to 1 of 4 unique aircraft classes, which is reflected in their different character portraits. The bomber for example is visually more inspired by pyrotechnics than

the regular dogfighter.

16

Setting

Blazing Aces takes place in an American 1940’s inspired universe where skyscraper’s

defines the human cities and the countryside is characterized by simplicity, almost to the

point of poverty. Most of the aircrafts under your command are inspired by 2nd world war type fighters and bombers. In addition everything is basically built with scrap on the

premise that the conflict against the machine bugs has taken its toll on the world and that

resources are scarce.

Theme wise the game will go from being light and idyllic with colorful environments, to a

darker and more grim atmosphere later on. This is to represent the game is getting more

difficult as well as to make the progression throughout the levels more clear. The game starts out on the relatively calm countryside, moves into a city under attack and ends up in

the enemy nest; a huge canyon. Throughout the game the time of day will change to bring

more variety to the experience and also to complete the transition into a darker theme.

17

THE TEAM

Blazing Aces was created by students at Futuregames Academy as a vertical slice created

over the course of 7 weeks. Microsoft acted as publisher and requested a fast paced casual action game for Windows 8 and their Surface 2 tablet.

Isak Åberg Nordmark

Designer

Hannes Lidbeck

Designer

Felix Fritzell

Artist

Kim Aava

Artist

Kalle Löwenberg

Artist

Hannes Delbeke

Artist

18

Being the commander

The ultimate objective in Blazing Aces is as simple as reaching the final boss and defeat it.

But at the very core the game is all about being the Commander. Each time you draw a

flight path for your aircrafts to follow, you quickly see a direct result of your action. This is

incredibly useful for new players who can instantly pick up the game and understand the gameplay. It’s also great for more experienced players who can constantly improve on

their tactics.

Because of the integrated score system players are constantly rewarded when playing.

After each level there’s an even greater reward waiting in the form of XP for your pilots as

well as scrap, not to mention progression in the story. The difficulty of each level increases exponentially, always to bring players new challenges. Not always by adding more

enemies, since the screen would be too cluttered, rather by adding new gameplay

elements or making some enemies more difficult to kill.

Even though we want to appeal to a broad audience and bring both casual and more

competitive gamers under the same roof. Blazing Aces is all about making players feel like

they are the Commander and that the pilots they command is their crew.

19

MARKETING & SALES

Tablets are our primary platform but the game works just as good on PC as well.

Due to our limited marketing budget and our inexperience in the field, we’d focus on using social media and other viral marketing tactics. Also to get the word of our game’s release

out we’ll try out some guerrilla marketing tactics as we get closer to release.

We also thought about launching a lightweight Skylanders marketing campaign, using actual toy airplanes to accompany the release of the game, creating a more vivid

experience where our youngest fans can see their toys come to life in the game.

SUMMARY

Our main goal right from the start was to create a game that was easy to grasp and fun to

play, two key features for creating a game for a broad audience. By having just one very

graspable input, we’ve basically covered the first objective. Since fun is very subjective we’ve simply created, what we think, are optimal conditions for achieving this goal. Hand

painted, simple and aesthetically pleasing art pieces. Casual fast paced action packed

gameplay that’s easily understandable. And last but not least a story about saving the world.

Of course we think that these features can also make us achieve many smaller goals, like

creating a memorable and long lasting game experience.