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Virtue's Heaven

A game about infinite Dogs, radical Friends, and the End of History

A platformer than can be played like an Instrument

Goal: Create a platforming game centered around maximising player expression and improvisation.

Idea:Do not restrict the player’s movement options, encourage players to use as many of them as possible, create spaces that facilitate on the fly improvisation.

Execution:

Movement System:

Even though Virtue’s Heaven can be described as a “Metroidvania”, it does not gate the player’s progression via movement upgrades. The game starts with them already having the entire moveset at their disposal. Every advanced move either serves multiple purposes and/or opens up the possibility to be chained into other moves. There are almost no context-sensitive moves and each move requires players to perform a deliberate (but still simple to execute) button input.

“Rank” System:

Enemies drop a resource that powers the player’s upgrade system. The amount of resources that players can gain, is tied to a (currently) hidden “Rank” system that tracks which moves players have used within their current combo. This rank increases, the more different attacks they have used and can greatly increase the amount of resources they can gain via fighting enemies.

Stage Design:

Stages are generally very open, with simple enemy encounters. Punishing stage hazards (e.g. Spikes) are only used sparingly. Stage-Gimmicks, such as timed platforms, or similar things are only deployed in specific areas and are meant to dynamically shift the space the players have to traverse, instead of presenting them with strict platforming challenges.