Design

Story

The story of this game is derived from Greek mythology, which is full of arguments between and within families. This one involves two families of gods and the unending collection of planets that are ruined and then restored in the process.

Cast of Characters

• Eris - Goddess of Strife and Discord (Controlled by the player.)
  • Daughter of Nyx
  • Sister of Hypnos
  • Mother of Lethe
• Nyx - Goddess of Night
  • Mother of Eris and Hypnos
• Hypnos - Goddess of Sleep
  • Daughter of Nyx
  • Sister of Eris
• Lethe - Goddess of Forgetfulness
  • Daughter of Eris
• Themis - Goddess of Divine Law and Order
  • Advisor to Zeus
  • Judge of other gods
  • Daughter of Uranus and Gaia
• Uranus - God of Sky
  • Father of Themis
• Gaia - Goddess of Earth
  • Mother of Themis

The Cycle

You are the goddess Eris in human form, condemned to repair the damage you caused to a planet. This story repeats in a loop indefinitely.

1. Eris causes war and destruction on a planet for her own entertainment that results in the elimination of most life and an imbalance of the elements.
2. The destruction and imbalance of elements deeply upsets Uranus and Gaia. They seek intervention by their daughter Themis against Eris.
3. Themis listens to her parents and tries Eris for what she considers to be crimes against nature.
4. Themis finds Eris guilty and sentences her to restore the elemental balance as a human placed directly on a planet she had ruined.
5. Eris is commanded to record a message to herself in the computer of an escape pod. This message describes the requirement to to restore the balance of the elements.
6. The escape pod cannot be activated until the balance has been restored and warns that Eris’ presence is itself a destabilizing force on the planet.
7. Themis incarnates Eris to a human form to prepare for her her punishment.
8. Eris' daughter Lethe then causes her to forget being a goddess entirely.
9. Eris' sister Hypnos puts Eris into a deep sleep and delivers her to the ruined planet.
10. Eris wakes up near the escape pod. The escape pod allows her to view the message she recorded for herself, and provides a basic weapon to use.
11. Driven by her desire to leave the ruined planet, Eris works to restore the balance of the elements by defeating the bosses of each biome and then a final boss in its own biome.
12. After the defeat of the final boss with the balance finally restored, Eris must return to the escape pod prior to time running out, presumably to avoid destabilizing the elements again.
13. When Eris gets to the escape pod and enters it ready to leave the planet, the now active escape pod ramps up in power to fly away. Instead of launching to space it violently explodes instead, wiping the human form of Eris from existence.
14. With her human form annihilated in the explosion, Eris to the realm of the gods. Being a goddess and immortal, her memories return and being a dark goddess she resumes doing what she does best... Causing strife and discord on another planet. This returns her to step #1 in the cycle.

Upgrades

As you explore the planet in Fracterebus, you discover upgrades that improve your survivability, movement, and the ways you can attack things.

Core Upgrades

There are typically multiple copies of each of these core upgrades and finding multiple of them increases the amount of whatever is controlled by that type of upgrade. For example, finding an additional energy capsule will increase the amount of damage you can take before being killed and finding additional missile upgrades will increase how many missiles you can carry.

Core Upgrades

Upgrade	Category	Description
Energy Capsule	Health	Increases the max amount of heath you have by 100. Essentially improves the number of hits you can take before being killed.
Backup Energy Capsule	Health	Gives a place to store additional energy beyond the max, each one holds 100 extra.
Missiles	Ammo	Increases the max number of missiles you can fire before running out. Can’t be used at all until you have at least one.
Big Missiles	Ammo	Increases the max number of big missiles you can fire before running out. Can’t be used at all until you have at least one.
Big Bombs	Ammo	Increases the max number of big bombs you can drop before running out. Can’t be used at all until you have at least one.

Health Transfers

Energy can be shunted back and forth between normal and backup manually at any time. Each manual transfer, regardless of size or direction, costs 10 energy to perform. An automatic transfer occurs when normal energy runs out. The full amount possible will be transferred until either backup is empty or normal is full. Automatic transfers are considered an emergency situation and are performed without an extra energy cost.

Suits

The environment is dangerous and suit upgrades help you survive and get around. All suit capabilities stack when active.

Suits

Suit	Effect	Description
Defense Suit	-50% General Damage	Reduces damage received from everything. It should be noted that later areas have enemies that hit at least 50% harder.
Liquid Suit	+90% Liquid Movement	Restores most of the lost movement caused by being in liquids. Water is way thinner than Mud or Lava.
Heat Suit	Heat Damage Reduction	Heated areas that hurt you, now hurt you way less (2%). Lava hurts you way slower too (15%).
Cold Suit	Cold Damage Reduction	Super cold areas that hurt you, now hurt you way less (2%). Cold water hurts you way slower too (15%).

Movement

These upgrades improve movement capabilities of the player, which in turn control access to various places. I briefly considered a grapple hook style item, but I don’t particularly want to have to code it and make it behave well. It's my opinion that there has never been a grapple hook ability that was implemented in a way that was actually fun.

Suits

Upgrade	Category	Description
High Jump	Jump	Amount of vertical movement when you jump is increased.
Double Jump	Jump	Can jump a second time while not on the ground.
Dash	Jump	A short range, high speed dash that goes left or right. Can only be performed once per jump, and only while not on the ground. Also works when in tiny form.
Wall Grab	Grab	Can grab onto walls and jump or launch off of them when attached.
Horizontal Launch	Launch	Can launch horizontally from a wall grab.
Vertical Launch	Launch	Can launch vertically from a crouch position.
Tiny Form	Size	Allows the player to move through short passages and drop bombs.
Tiny Form Jump	Jump	Can jump while in tiny form (instead of requiring bombs for vertical movement).
Rush	Run Speed	Can run faster than normal, continuously without an energy cost. Is the fallback speed option (from Sprint) when below 100 energy if available.
Sprint	Run Speed	Can run very fast and break sprint blocks. Requires distance to build up to max speed, consumes energy while at max speed and when breaking sprint blocks. Will use this speed automatically if more than 100 energy is available and falls back to either rush or normal movement depending on availability.

Weapon Upgrades

Your weapon can be upgraded to do more damage as you explore. This makes enemies easier to kill, allows getting past certain obstacles or opening certain doors, and in general improves your ability to survive.

Standard Gun Upgrades

All effects in the table below stack but the total damage percentage improvement is relative to the base weapon. Ammo is unlimited regardless of enabled options. These are your standard blaster weapons.

Weapon Upgrades

Weapon	Effect	Description
Normal	None	The standard gun given to you by the escape pod. You shoot stuff, it hurts stuff.
Power	+50% Damage	Causes your gun to be more powerful. Hurts stuff more.
Spread	3 Parallel Shots	Causes your gun to fire 3 parallel shots at once (an extra above and below). Each shot does the full damage if it hits. They are tracked separately.
Quantum	+25% Damage	Allows your shots to pass through solid things in the environment. Has no effect on passing through enemies.
Phased	+25% Damage	Allows your shots to pass through an enemy to hurt a second enemy behind them. Has no effect on passing through the environment.

Elemental Upgrades

These are upgrades that have provide elemental powers to your weapon. Only one can be active at a time, but are always on top of whatever weapon upgrades are active.

Elemental Weapon Features

Target	Effect	Description
Normal	+20% Damage	When something isn't weak to any particular element, you still cause some extra damage when using an elemental weapon.
Weak	+100% Damage	When something is weak (typically from the opposite biome) you cause way more damage to them.
Similar Weakness	+50% Damage	When something is weak to something similar to the current element, it causes more than normal damage.
Strong	-90% Damage	When something is strong against your current element (typically from the same biome) you cause almost no damage to them.

Specific Elemental Effects

Each biome has a main boss that is the strongest form of the element from that biome and guards the weapon that is strong against it.

Specific Elemental Effects

Biome	Description
Normal	+20% Damage	When something isn't weak to any particular element, you still cause some extra damage when using an elemental weapon.