Todesfall

The core design aim of this game was to address many of my gripes with 2D Shoot ‘em ups in the style of Enter the Gungeon. In many 2D Shoot em’ ups, increased difficulty is by and large achieved through the introduction of more components to keep track of mainly the introduction more complex bullet patterns. Though this type of ‘more is more’ design can be an engaging challenge in simply forcing the player to keep track of many different things at once and to hone their reflexes, such an approach eliminates the relevance of other engaging aspects of the primary game play loop. Looking instead to a ‘less is more’ design ethos, I created Todesfall without any ranged enemies and with a player weapon that fires inaccurately and which requires significant time to reload a single round (during which you are slowed). Turning the traditional shoot em’ up formula on its head lead to a very different type of player engagement. Instead of solely focusing on reflexes, the game had a greater emphasize on strategic positioning, luring enemies into traps, blocking hatches to prevent the spawning of enemies etc. This combined with the massive amount of slow moving enemies made Todesfall into a uniquely slow-paced yet quite difficult shoot ‘em up where one wrong move or misjudged reload would slowly compound into an unmanageable situation.