What can I shoot with arrows, that's family-friendly?

I'm thinking about making an archery game. But I'd like to keep it fun and family-friendly.

As an example, the Tower Defense genre was traditionally about extreme levels of mass-murder... until Bloons came along, and made it about popping balloons instead.

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Also relevant, the "Longbow" mini-game on Vive (which is awesome, and yes I'm inspired by it) has enemies that are little two dimensional, almost stick-figure cartoons:

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I love those little guys. Technically I guess they're people, but because they are faceless, cartoony, and literally disappear from the side, I don't feel bad about popping them by the dozen. (And even my wife, who has very low tolerance for violence in video games, had no issue with them.)

What else should I consider along these lines? What adorable, family-friendly enemies would you just love to aim at, and not mind your impressionable young'uns doing the same?

 

Based on the title I was going to suggest balloons, but I see you're already there.

A lot of games decide to use fruits and vegetables and symbols as targets. You can do themes, like hitting pumpkins or pumpkin-heads for Halloween, arrows at heart symbols for Valentine's day or for a romance theme, and even things you wouldn't realistically think of as targets, like diamonds and gold coins.

It occurs to me that tough targets might include falling leaves and feathers.

 

Pretty much anything that doesn't correspond to a human, animal, or any vehicle that could be imagined to contain either should be safe. Traditional bulls eye red/white circular targets, trees, barrels, TV's, computer monitors displaying a BSOD, hearts, clouds, boxes, etc.

 

Stuffed animals, maybe?

 

Great ideas. Thanks, all!

 

How about making them as magic arrows? That might work. Ha! Ha!

 

Sorry, I'm not getting it. Can you explain?

 

An assortment of everyday objects that make satisfying noises when shot.

Bottles
Basketball
Bricks
Watermelon
a big gong
Tree stump
Light bulbs
mailbox
garbage can
tv
stack of tires
old shoes hanging from a power line
big spoon
coke cans
clay pigeons/frisbee
etc....

 

maybe look for inspiration in real life - first thing that comes to mind are all those games at funfairs that involve shooting / throwing things at something. also relevant for virtual prizes, etc...

 

More good ideas!

But to be clear, I'm not making a shooting gallery/range. I really like the excitement that comes from invaders (of some sort) trying to get into your stronghold. Now that doesn't mean they can't be coke cans, bulls' eyes, etc... Bloons TD does just fine with the invaders being an ever-increasing stream of balloons. Games don't have to make sense.

But, it'd be nice to have something with some personality — advancing on stubby little legs, shaking tiny little fists in a threatening manner, etc. That's harder to get from an inanimate object.

One idea I had was to make the invaders petroglyphs — again with the evil wizard, enchanting them to leap off their cave walls and attack our castle.

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A good animator could inject a lot of personality into those, I bet.

 

I think your idea is to use something "abstract" i.e. that does not look like a real person. But I think the minute, you give this abstract thing some "personality" people will associate with it and you might be back to square one. Remember all those old school titles that got classified back then (river raid, friday 13th, etc.) - it sounds your wife is a good advisor as to when you cross the line.

I guess if you find something that makes "shooting good" you could be in a different situation, i.e. the animals have a deadly virus that spreads through air (but virus dies after a few seconds) - as long as they stay out of a certain radius (distance) from you, you can shoot the antidote with your arrow that immediately heals them...

 

how about fruits as characters, could easily think of different features/personalities/damage splashes for each..
or mushrooms, or vegetables, and you could shoot with a fork arrows perhaps..

and maybe killing them would make positive-candy-crushy / vitaminized-power-up effect..

hmm, then they could be candies also, candies are bad, they destroy your castle made out of teeths.. : D

 

I used to shoot bow for a while, and in our practice sessions we occassionaly used to shoot at hanging CD's.
The fun thing about that is when you hit them full on they kind of explode

but as mentioned above pretty much every everyday object can be used as a target.

 

Those would make some people even more sad than humanoid enemies because of their distance to the "uncanny valley".

Just brainstorming: enemies could be little angry flame guys (just type "angry flame" into google image search), and you shoot water arrows (as in the thief games) at them.


What's your ultimate goal with the game? And what kind of visual style/fidelity/polish are you aiming for?

 

A variation on the balloon would be to use bouncing balls that have faces on them.

 

Kind of morbid, like some twisted nightmare. Like PTSD nightmare for Tom Hanks Cast Away.

 

Not a horrible idea...

Great question. I want to compete with these. But on iOS (and maybe Android) instead of Vive/Rift.

It seems that most of those use some sort of goblins/orcs as the enemies. That's a little bloody for my tastes. I love the little 2-dimensional Vive guys. They hit exactly the sweet spot for me of being adorable, yet I don't feel bad about shooting them with arrows, because they are so clearly not human (or animal).

My own company logo is based on petroglyphs, of the abstract-sun-spiral variety.



So that's another (minor) reason to favor the petroglyph guys. Though it might be seen as a little derivative of The Lab — Longbow.

But maybe that's OK. By the time I add upgrades, multiple maps, multiplayer coop, etc., it'll be so far beyond its original inspiration that maybe nobody will care.

 

Where/how are people supposed to play it? More a toilet/commute kind of game or a standing roomscale experience with controls like an augmented reality game, but without the camera filming anything - the phone is just your window into the world that you can use to aim, and touch controls are used to draw the bow and shoot?

How does the competition for archery games look on iOS? I don't have a smart phone and I have no clue what phone games look like nowadays.



P.s.: I think archery is super cool. If I had a space to safely shoot it I'd have bought a proper bow years ago.

 

You can flip the problem so the target doesn't matter - could even be kids being shot by arrows. The key with this is that the arrows themselves do not need to be barbed! The could be little parcels of smoke, or ink and so on. Even cherub fires non lethal arrows.

 

Okay. Like magical arrows, that you fire at magical enemies.
Sorry that I didn't explain better, in my above post.

Eg. You fire magical arrows, at for eg. cutesy rock men enemies or other etc.
that are trying to invade your fort etc.
And when the cutesy enemies etc. get hit by the magical arrows, all sorts of
colourful particles/hitsparks, could fly out of them.
Then, they could do a crazy facial expression animation, to show that they
just got KO'ed by the magical arrows.

 

It's a standing VR game. You'd play it with something like this. Aim with gaze, and push the button to shoot (actually, press the button to notch and draw back; release the button to let fly). I've prototyped this much already, with just balloons floating up and bursting into confetti when hit, and I can say that it's fun.

Weak to nonexistent.

From a business perspective, this may be a stupid move; it's extremely hard to make any money in the app store, and making a VR game only limits your audience that much more. But this idea has gripped me and won't let go. I feel compelled to do this.

Hmm, in that case I was going to advise you to pick up the $15 VR viewer above, but I guess I'd have to first advise you to pick up a $700 smart phone.

 

Some of these?

 

Then you gotta do it! But from what you describe wouldn't it work to give the players an alternate control scheme where they just hold the phone at arms length (without stereo rendering)? Unless depth perception is super critical for gameplay I'd imagine this to work as sort of a lowered barrier to entry, saying "Oh look, isn't archery fun? You just need to spend ~20$ and you could be doing this in VR, wouldn't that be great?".

Yeah... not gonna happen.
Maaaaybe a rift or vive at some point, but not soon.

Oh, didn't know those things have a button. I was thinking of something like looking down and right to grab an arrow (optional and maybe unneccessary), and looking up to start drawing and the arrow gets released at the end of the animation, so you'd have to time it right. But if there's a button then people likely will prefer that I think.

 

I just skimmed this topic but especially if you're looking for inspiration for a defense-style game, take a look at Sweatshop.

It's technically a tower defence game but it is themed completely different: you don't shoot and drop enemy health but instead 'fill a progress bar' to make clothes.

You don't realise you're playing a tower defense until you're well into the game. (well, if you're going to check it out with that knowledge you'll probably see it straight away, but... )

The official site seems down but it's still playable at some flash game portals.
http://www.crazygames.com/game/sweatshop

 

@JoeStrout: just wanted to make sure you know about this guy:

Probably not really as "historically accurate" as he claims and rather goofy at times, but still fun to watch and maybe inspiring for alternate "firing modes" or "trickshot challenges".

 

Yes, you're absolutely right, and in fact this appears to be something of a standard for VR games. Some call it "magic window," others just call it "not VR."

Absolutely. Note that not all Cardboard-style headsets have a button. My first one did not, and I was like

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But then I got the headset linked above, which does have the button, and life is better. I also got a MFi (Made for iPhone) game controller, which looks and feels like a PS3 controller and connects to the phone via Bluetooth. I plan to also support that (basically mash any button to do the equivalent of the Cardboard button), for cases like my earlier viewer, or any time people want to keep their hands off their headset.

 

Oh yes. Can't make an archery game without knowing about this guy!

 

I have an idea.

Spoiler: The things I make when I have free time and no idea how to spend it.

BIG RED ANGRY CUBES WITH MUSTACHES.​

 

Speaking about bows and arrows....
You guys should check out Mr. Gandalf himself, Gary Chynne.
That guy teaches, how Nordic European people, shot arrows back in the
old sword and shield days.
The old style homing aiming arrow technique, he demonstrated in one of
his vids, is amazing and leaves you with alot of questions.

 

I am scarred for life.

 

If you want to learn more about archery then I can recomment his videos: NUSensei
Like mentioned already you can also make the arrows non lethal. Instead of dying hit targets can simply disappear.