Gameplay

As I wanted the the transformations to be more dynamic and visible, I made the game a third person play. Although it was also firmly in the 'Action/Adventure' genre I decided that I wanted the game to be more cerebral than just another version of Sega's 'Altered Beast', where the transformations would only serve as a weapon. I wanted the changes to be relevant to whatever mission in the game is taking place, that each mission would require the ability of certain animal forms. For instance, for stealth the gamer would use the black panther or small cat form, for infiltration - spider, for speed - cheetah and so on. That made the gameplay more interesting and more involved. I needed to make the control system as simple as possible, as while researching transformations in games I had read that a large part of the problem for Activisions 'Transformers: The Game' was that they had made the system of transforming in the game to complex a control. So mine would be a simple button press and wheel selection process such as utilised in Arkham Asylum to select the weapon type and Radical Entertainment's 'Prototype' to select the power.

The game would be open world like Prototype as well but with a mission led path. It would be single player as well as the premise and set-up did not allow itself for play as a multiplayer game.

HUD:

Because I had used nanobots, they would also act as a good way to give a health bar readout, their 'charge' would enable a limit to the number of times the player could change form. I designed the character so he would have a readout on his wrist which displayed the nanobots charge  as well (it would be bio-luminescent and therefore organic and able to be absorbed as well). This health gauge worked well as the onscreen HUD and I worked in the form select wheel to the gauge so that it showed an icon of the form in use on screen as well.