Programming games as game designer

Passive skills (x25)

These are skills which do not need manual activation or use from player, they provide certain benefits on their own.

1. Interference: Slows down all enemy projectiles.
2. Friendly Fire: Gives enemy projectiles chance to become "allied", potentially causing enemies to strike each other.
3. Shield of Rust: A skill that would re-conceptualize Rusty Platforms: they still break on impact, but deflect enemy projectiles. (So now you have to play around fragile shields, sort of)
4. Lifesteal: Eliminating an enemy offers a 15% chance to regain 1 health point and a 10% chance to restore 5 energy points.
5. Overclock: Doubles the player's Energy and Health pools.
6. Overclock, Hacked: Triples Energy and Health pools but deactivates natural energy regeneration. (some other energy skill is needed to play with shooting/skill usage)
7. Gravity Scourge: Performing Jump Takedowns recovers 1 health point and creates a Shield with 3 charges.
8. Combo Boost: Each enemy takedown increments the combo counter by 2, rather than 1.
9. Combo Boost, Hacked: Each enemy takedown increases the combo counter by 3 (instead of 1), but combo diminishes progressively, with its rate of decline accelerating until it's reset by a new takedown.
10. Bloodlust: As the combo count grows, the energy cost and cooldowns of skills decrease.
11. Double-edged, Hacked: All numerical effects of passive skills are doubled. You can't use active skills and take double damage.
12. Kinetic Joints: Increases the jump force and speed of horizontal movement.
13. Static Coil: Every 2 seconds, blasts the nearest target within small range, such as an enemy or projectile, ignoring any shields.
14. Deadzone: Negates enemy modifiers within a small radius around the player.
15. Air Glide/Mechanic: Allows the player to hasten their fall using a dedicated control key. Reduces jump power.
16. Swiftshield: The faster the player moves, the greater the chance they will evade damage.
17. Transient Vitality: Each enemy takedown grants 1 temporary health point, which disappears after 3 seconds.
18. Homing Retaliation: Each time the player is hit, a homing projectile is launched at the damage source.
19. Vengeance Blast: Each time the player is hit, everything within a small radius, including enemy projectiles, is damaged.
20. Smoke and Mirrors: Every few seconds, an illusion of the player appears, mirroring player's actions. This illusion has 1 health point and serves to distract enemies. There can't be more than 3 illusions at any given point.
21. Repeater: Each time an active skill is used, there's a small chance it will be triggered repeatedly without cooldown or energy cost.
22. Shockwave: Each time the player lands on a platform, there's a chance to create a powerful shockwave that may cause enemies to fall down from platform to one below.
23. Juggernaut, Hacked: The player takes double damage from projectiles, but enemy collisions cause no harm and instead damage the enemy.
24. Borrowed life: Allows you to go to negative values of HP and Energy, but requires to "pay" them back after x seconds. If HP is not paid -- player is killed, if Energy is not paid -- it stops being consumable.
25. From the grave: When the player's health hits zero, the game over is delayed, making the player invulnerable and still operational for the next 7-10 seconds.

Active skills (x25)

Unlike Passive Skills, Skills below must be manually activated to produce certain effect. They have an associated energy cost and cooldown period.

1. Emergency Platform: Creates a platform directly beneath the player.
2. Air Jump: Allows for a "double jump" while in mid-air.
3. Decoy: Deploys a decoy target that enemies will prioritize over the player.
4. Charm: Temporarily "charms" enemy units within a small area, causing them to attack other enemies and ignore the player.
5. Sword Slash/base mechanic: Allows to perform a melee attack just in front of the player, to protect from projectiles, deal with melee units and allow more aggressive approach towards Shooters
6. Deflection Barrier Provides a shield that deflects rather than destroys enemy projectiles, making them a threat to enemies. (This could be a passive skill that upgrades another active skill.)
7. Redeployment: Repositions visible enemies, clustering them together.
8. Blast Grenade: Launches a projectile that explodes after a certain distance, causing area damage.
9. Time Stop: Time stop; freezes in place all enemies, platforms and projectiles.
10. Chronosphere: Time Bubble; slows/stops time within a certain area.
11. Def-line: Skill that allows to "draw" a line with a mouse, which becomes a deflecting barrier.
12. Split-line: Similar to the above, but any player projectile passing through the drawn line splits into several projectiles.
13. Call for backup: Summons another pod that fires automatically on nearest enemies.
14. Bullet Cloud: Spews out a cloud of bullets that linger around the player and react to nearby projectiles or enemies.
15. Bastion: Performs an aerial move and enters a freefall until colliding with a platform. Upon impact, adopts a defensive stance on the platform, gains a shield with 20 charges, and amplifies HP/Energy restoration. (The Pod can still fire.)
16. Backup: for next n seconds, you are invulnerable. All the damage or healing you take in the meantime will be applied after effect ends, but healing is doubled.
17. Dimensional Slip: If moving faster than a certain speed, allows the player to teleport to any location within a certain distance.
18. EMP: Expensive to use and requires 1-1.5 seconds of vulnerable "cast time." If successful, destroys all projectiles on screen and debuffs every enemy, preventing them from attacking for a few seconds.
19. Structural sacrifice: Player takes 1 damage. Current cooldowns are reduced by x seconds.
20. Break-In: Melee range, allows the player to break into an enemy and hide inside it for a few seconds. Regeneration is amplified during this period, and if the enemy can move, the player can control its movements. (useful for flyer enemies, but it might be problematic to reach them)
21. Twin: Summons a copy of Player Unit for x seconds, that jumps up as well and uses the player's other equipped skills.
22. Barrage: increases attack rate of all of your pods, including summoned ones.
23. Temporal Lag: "rewinds" player back to 3 seconds ago, affecting HP, Energy and position. Should be used with caution, since after rewind player might appear between the platforms.
24. Immobilize: Stops all enemy projectiles in their tracks. The projectiles remain dangerous but immobile.
25. Refocus: Randomly changes the type of all visible Buff Points.

Projectile Modifier (x10)

Passive skills mostly, but can be made active for short duration of time? These probably consume more energy than normal ones.

• Wraparound Modifier: maybe a skill, or mechanic in general that allows bullets to wraparound similar to the player. Changes the fighting approach from "shoot through enemy projectiles" to "dodge projectiles; shoot to the side".
• Smart Modifier: a togglable/passive skill (or an upgrade to Ultimate one) that "aim-assists" the bullets, making them curve towards enemies.
• Split Modifier: each shot has a chance of "splitting", retaining any modifiers (works with homing bullets, for example). ~40% chance to split into 2, 15% chance to split into 3…
• Fierce Modifier: increases the attack speed, but decreases the accuracy.
• Spread Modifier: slows attack speed, but shoots several bullets in arc, ~shotgun.
• Bounce Modifier: when projectile hits enemy unit, allows it to bounce once in the direction of the closest enemy unit.
• Ghostly Modifier: projectile that ignores other projectiles and rusty platforms, only colliding with enemy units.
• Shielded Modifier: projectiles with their own small shields.
• Artillery Modifier: projectiles that are affected by gravity, then fragment into multiple parts at their apex.
• Boomerang Modifier: projectiles that travel in "boomerang" arc, returning to Pod if they didn't shoot anything. Useful for taking down shooters instead of "outshooting" their bullets upfront.

Enemy Modifier (x10)

Additional modifier for enemies alongside the base Shield/Invisibility/Homing Projectiles.

• Stealth Modifier: Unit has Invisible projectiles. (Combine that with Homing!)
• Enfeeble Modifier: Unit has feeble aura. Around this enemy, player moves slower and jumps weaker.
• Rallying Modifier: Unit has raging aura, nearby allies shoot faster, but less precisely.
• Groundbreaking Modifier: Unit shots damage normal platforms, destroying them in 1-3 hits.
• Hack Modifier: Unit disables player's active abilities while on screen.
• Blackout Modifier: Unit disables player's passive abilities while on screen
• Baleful Modifier: Unit has projectiles that disable Player's healing and energy regeneration for next n seconds if hit.
• Engineering Modifier: Unit applies a random modifier to his allies around every n seconds.
• Stunning Modifier: Projectiles of this unit render Player uncontrollable/stunned for 1s if hit.
• Logic Virus Modifier: Projectile of this unit disable one of Player's skills for the rest of the run if hit.

Buff Point (x10)

Additional buffs for Buff Points in addition to Heal/Jump/Invisibility.

1. Energy Dispenser: This buff point restores energy. Kind of boring
2. ECHO: This buff point duplicates your next action within the following 5 seconds. If the action is a skill, it's recast after a delay without any cooldown or energy cost. If it's an attack, it launches an additional projectile. (point is to carefully measure the moment of receiving the buff)
3. Upgrader: This Buff Point temporarily provides the benefits of one of your non-unlocked passive skills.
4. EMP: This buff point triggers a violent blast that eliminates all visible projectiles.
5. Purge: This buff point causes a blast that removes all modifiers from visible enemies.
6. Black Box: For a certain duration, this buff point negates the energy cost of skills.
7. Check Point: This buff point acts as a revival point. If the player dies within a certain range, they are resurrected here.
8. Momentum: This buff point slows down all moving platforms for a set duration.
9. Metallic: For a certain duration, this buff point allows you to jump on Rusty platforms.
10. Selector: This buff point gradually cycles through all other available buff types, allowing the player to choose the one they need the most.

Platform Type (x10)

Both buff points and monsters can reside on these platforms, prompting some curious interactions.

• Platform that disappears after one jump
• Platform that jerks x meters in random direction when player approaches it
• Platform that can blow up if any projectile approaches it, taking down several closer platforms
• Platform that moves up and down
• Platform that has a shield that needs to be taken down for it to be usable
• Platform that begins to "heat up" once on screen, and disappears after x seconds
• Pair of platforms, one teleports player to the other
• Impassable from below platform
• Platform that reduces the jump power when stepped on
• Invisible platform

New Enemy Type (x5)

• Feral -- A melee unit with a small "trigger radius". The Feral lunges in an arc to grab the player, dealing substantial damage (3).
• Brute -- This unit redirects all damage directed towards its allies within a certain radius to itself, and boasts an increased health pool.
• Ensnarer -- This enemy connects platforms around himself with wires, hindering passage. It also possesses a ranged attack that "grabs" the player, slowing them down and pulling them closer.
• Repulsor -- Equipped with large area-of-effect attacks that push the player away (but deal no damage), the Repulsor also generates an aura that deflects player projectiles.
• Duple -- An unique enemy unit that does nothing when encountered for the first time. If skipped, he appears x meters above, gaining several modifiers. If skipped again -- he keeps reappearing higher and higher with more and more modifiers and abilities.

Base Player Unit (x5)

Default unit player plays as has…

• 5 HP,
• Energy Pool of 30
• average jump force (jump height)
• average steer force (horizontal speed)
• default Pod that fires with decent attack rate.

But for different builds there might be more interesting starting points… Their respective features are italicized.

• The Wall, 16T:
  • 10 HP,
  • 20 Energy,
  • average jump force,
  • low steer force,
  • default pod
• The Trickster, 11S:
  • 3 HP,
  • 40 Energy,
  • slightly above average jump force,
  • high steer force,
  • weak pod,
  • 5 Skill Slots
• The Warlord, 20B:
  • Has 7 HP,
  • 20 Energy,
  • above average jump force,
  • above average steer force,
  • powerful pod
  • 3 Skill Slots
• The Madman, 7Q:
  • Has 1 HP,
  • 30 Energy,
  • below average jump force,
  • below average steer force,
  • weak pod
  • 6 Skill Slots
• The Charlatan, 5W:
  • 3 HP,
  • 50 Energy,
  • slightly below average jump force,
  • below average steer force,
  • weak Pod

Final Note

It's not really a "100 ABSOLUTELY BEST IDEAS for this game", but more like a challenge "think of a 100 ideas that you would *really* use in this game". I'm not claiming  that they're extremely good or immensely creative. I find them interesting and think that they would work towards making the game better.

Besides, using *all of them* at once would be a messy disaster, so it's best to pick a coherent set with a shared idea.

In any case, hope you found it interesting!