Scratch

This game is different from a lot of games. We've put a lot of work into the game mechanics and we've come up with ways to do them. The idea is that you have a Focus Meter that charges up when you focus. It slowly goes back down to 50 (the default) whenever Focus Mode is off. When your focus is broken from getting distracted by something, it goes down to like 25 and then you have to wait for it to get back up to 50 before you can use it again.

Focus affects a lot of things though. For example, if you're focus gets to 100, you basically go so fast that time appears to be slowed down or stopped. When you have 50 focus, time goes normally fast and when you have under 50 focus, you're in a daze and everything seems to be going too fast. When you focus, the environment changes. For example, the coloured backgrounds and people fade out to gray as you near 100, and certain things are highlighted by a red trail. Here's a really bad mockup I drew in a few minutes:



The red shows the trails of the guards. It's supposed to be like predicting the path of the guards (but in reality, it'll just be highlighting the set routes the guards have). Not all of the routes will be so plain and easy to see.  As your focus gets higher, you'll see other things too, like for example, which doors can be opened, how close you can get to the guards, and where they are looking. Clues and important things are also highlighted in red. If there's more than one path/guard, then there will be different shades of red, depending on which of the guards you're focusing on.

There'll also be disguises (like a police uniform, and a doctor uniform, etc) that'll allow you to go beside people and pickpocket them. You can also knock out guards if you go into their blind spots (directly at the back of their 'line of vision') but it's gonna be really hard to do, so it wouldn't be cheap. Also there are some guards who can't be knocked out. This is where you'll engage in a fight.

Using this focus trick, Black Arrow is a pretty tough fighter. It'll be something like choosing to dodge, attack, grab or block from a specific area. That's still a work in progress though and I have no idea how it's going to be done, but the rest is pretty much worked out (of course we'll still probably run into bugs along the programming process).

Sounds cool! I could be a backup programmer.

Ahh. And you lay a trap or set up an ambush for them? Maybe it could be someone you knew all along, and it's a shocking betrayal type thing?

Hmm. Maybe his most trusted source was feeding him false information, trying to set him up. Maybe he was in the burglars pay, or the burglar had some influence over him, like possibly holding his family hostage etc.

Okay. how about, he's hired by some shop owner after a recent string of robberies in the neighborhood. He steals evidence from the police locker and tails down suspects. Along the way, he discovers that the thief is planning to steal some gem and the other stuff was just practice, so now you set up a trap in the museum and catch them.

Any other ideas?

Turns out there's already a darkest hour game, so we're changing it to something like "Dark Detective"