Therealhungryreader - Blog Posts
So a friend of mine from @mmmskulljuice‘s circle was talking about their desire to make a “submarine Zelda”, and I started drawing this little guy on the assumption that you’re playing AS the submarine. More ideas followed:
The title of the game is Foot-Long Hero. You play as a very small submarine drone who’s on a mission to visit five to eight dungeony areas above ground, but they can only be accessed from underwater.
You can name your hero sub whatever you want, but his canon name is Hoagy.
The villain’s name is Grinder.
Hoagy is a member of a wandering group of salvage drones who call themselves the Poor Boys.
Yes, we’re riding the sandwich puns hard in this.
Hoagy is a sentient, mobile vehicle in the tradition of classic game characters like Twin Bee and Opa-Opa. He gets hungry, scared, and has emotional reactions to things that happen in the game, but he’s still a machine and has interchangeable parts.
Hoagy is equipped with boots, boxing gloves, a propeller, and a nosecone. The boots and boxing gloves are only used while on land: the prop and nosecone come into play underwater. Each of his parts are interchangeable and he’ll find new propellers, boots and so on that will give him new powers.
Being a sub, Hoagy swims much faster than he can run. He’s highly mobile underwater, to the point where the underwater sections of the game are more like a top-down Zelda, whereas on land it’s a traditional side-scrolling platformer.
On land you can run, jump, launch your boxing gloves, and perform a special Periscope Flip, shown on the bottom, that lets you jump much higher.
Underwater, you can not only launch your boxing gloves but also extend your periscope up to the top, which is a factor in solving many puzzles.
Later in the game you may even acquire a special hat that allows you to grab things with your periscope and pull yourself out of the water.
You can also play as a female-presenting sub, which adds eyelashes onto your periscope but otherwise doesn’t change the game. The canon name for the female sub hero is Baguette, but again you can call her whatever you want.