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 1940s. Think WW2
propeller planes rather than modern jets and stereotypical old school fighter aces with
leather hats and round glasses. The games 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 its 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 theres 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 were certain Blazing Aces is a game that can be enjoyed by
everyone, however since its designed with online experiences in mind we have to aim for
a PEGI 12 rating.


5





Controls
As mentioned before theres 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 its 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 games 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. Dont 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 youll 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. Its generally
weaker than the actual HP, both in endurance and amount, but it starts to regenerate 5
seconds after it last got hit, meaning its theoretically an infinite source of protection.

The HP, red meter, is static (doesnt 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: Theres 4 different aircraft classes in the game; dogfighter, destroyer, juggernaut
and minelayer. Weve tried to make each aircraft unique and better fit for different
situations.

The Dogfighter with its two front mounted machine guns excels when theres 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,
its 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 theyre
the only source of damage infliction. Therefore we created enemies of different sizes and
with different roles, again to add to the games tactical elements. To help players
understand their basic functionality theyre 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, weve 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 weve 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
players 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 dogfighters machine guns, or more mines for the minelayer.

High score: In Blazing Aces theres 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 youll 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 enemys 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. Were 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 players
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 theres 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.

Theres 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 thats what you
thought. During the course of the game, youll 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 youll get introduced to a bunch of characters in the form of
pilots. You can choose freely which ones youll want to use for the different missions and
hire new ones if none live up to your demands. All pilots have a common denominator,
theyre 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 1940s inspired universe where skyscrapers
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 berg Nordmark
Designer

Hannes Lidbeck
Designer

Felix Fritzell
Artist

Kim Aava
Artist

Kalle Lwenberg
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. Its 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 theres 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, wed focus on using
social media and other viral marketing tactics. Also to get the word of our games release
out well 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, weve basically covered the first objective. Since fun is very subjective
weve 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 thats 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.