Second Game Idea: Galactic Repoman

Thinking back to some of the games I loved as a kid, Solar Jetman for the NES was one I cherished. It was a crude space flight/shooter game where you had to find and transport various ship parts scattered across planets. You had a tractor beam for carrying the parts and some basic weapons to fight off the aliens on the planets. When you'd pick up a part with the tractor beam, the weight of the part would affect the physics of spaceflight.

When I think about the games that I've enjoyed building, they usually involve some light physics simulation, so a space flight game sounds fun to build. But would it be fun to play?

I handed this idea to Claude:

I'm interested in building a game, but first I want to prototype the idea to see if it's any fun. My idea is: a 2D game where you control a spaceship and have to navigate a strange planet to find and retrieve artifacts, ala Solar Jetman. You can rotate the ships direction and thrust in whatever direction you're facing. The planets have a gravity effect. The mission of the game is to collect various items on the planet with a tractor beam. Towing with the tractor beam affects the flight physics. There are some enemies on the planet that try to attack you and you have some weapons to fight back. The weapons include a gun that shoots from the tip of the ship in a straight direction, missiles, and bombs.

Can you try prototyping this in a standalone HTML app so I can see if it's any fun to play? The things I want to test are:

• How do the flying controls feel?
• How does towing feel?
• How do firing the weapons feel?

And this is what it came up with after a few minutes: HTML Prototype

Again, I'm amazed at how quickly it puts something playable together, without using any 3rd party framework. And surprisingly, it's not terrible! I enjoy flying the ship around, and shooting down aliens with homing missiles is very satisfying. The flight controls are a bit finicky, the bombs aren't very useful, and the tractor beam slams my ship into the ground, but these are variables to tweak.

I feel good about this idea. Next up is to flesh out the requirements and prototype some more to see if it has legs.