Woo hoo! plus game summary at this point

Yay the quiz is done! Now I can concentrate on building the game...

So to start with, here is a compilation of my thoughts re how the game's going to work/play. Not sure how I'm going to translate it into GameMaker, but that's an activity for tomorrow :-)

Game design outline - Stink Bug!

• You're a Stink bug. The aim of the game is to stay alive as long as possible by sucking the health/life out of the fruit on the trees while avoiding your enemies the farmers, the birds and later on, the spiders. Flying around uses up health (the faster you fly, the faster you use up health?)
• Target audience: casual gamers (kids to adults - anyone with a PC (as it's going to be an exe file) with an hour or so to kill e.g. in their lunch hour)
• This should be a fun, lighthearted yet slightly challenging game with a message about sustainable living. It should be easy to pick up and learn by anyone
  
• This is a one player, side scrolling game. Each level is played in an orchard of limited size
• Each orchard starts with a row of 10 trees. The 'orchard' has a fence on either side and just grass in fields as the 'limit' of the game area. The screen will fit a maximum of 3 trees in it at any one time, but it scrolls back and forth as you move the stink bug back and forth
• There is a random allocation of fruit on each tree (at any one time 10-20?)
• You move around using (the mouse or keyboard?) and land on fruit. When you land on fruit, hold down the space bar/mouse button to suck the energy out of them
• When they are mature fruit, Oranges have a maximum energy value of 10, Limes have a maximum value of 7 and Lemons have a maximum value of 5. Fruit will display their maximum energy value at all times and it will count down as you drain it. You only absorb energy from the fruit as long as you are sitting on it and have the button held down. As soon as you start to suck on a fruit, you have corrupted it – it will die anyway, so best to make the most of it and drain it completely (unless you’re under attack from an enemy!)
• Fruit does grow back on trees – randomly? Or after X seconds in a random place? But if a tree ever gets to the point where there is no actual fruit on it at one time, it will wither and die. This will leave you with less potential food sources. Also, your enemies only ever patrol the length of alive trees – if you have a shorter orchard, you are more likely to encounter an enemy!
• [The oranges get bigger over time as the tree matures i.e. they're worth more points which is a driver for letting them get older, and live more sustainably. Although staying in one place longer is dangerous (more likely to get hit by farmer or bird)]
• Fruit expires after X seconds/minutes even if you don't eat them (?)
• Farmers run back and forth the length of the alive trees in their orchard and (randomly or when they sense you flying?) spray pesticide into the trees. The bug spray fog lasts X seconds. Every second you spend in the fog drains X energy points. The spray only reaches the bottom branches of a tree. Occasionally (randomly?), Farmers need to reload their spray cans – they will let you know when this is happening – make the most of the threat free lower branches!
• Birds swoop in from random directions. You will know when one is coming by the bird cry, but you won’t know which way it will come for you! Birds fly in one direction in an arc – they can only reach you if you are in the sky or in the top branches of the tree/s in front of them in their flight path. If a bird locks in on you – you’re bird food!
• You have stinky poison that you eject as a cloud around you which repels your enemies for X seconds after you ‘fire’ it, allowing you to evade attack. You start with 2 stink bombs, but can collect more through out the game in secret bonus oranges. You can only fire the stink bomb when you aren’t flying or eating (?) If you are doing one of these you have to stop what you’re doing? (trade off if you are on a bonus orange or low on energy and have to waste food?) (but how else do you repel a bird in flight?
• Secret bonus mature oranges randomly appear and only reveal themselves once you’ve drained 5? 7? of the total 10 points, when they start flashing red. If you can stay on them until they’ve been totally drained, you get another stink bomb added to your artillery. If you can’t drain it to the end, the bonus is lost
• As the aim of the game is to stay alive as long as possible, each stage has a time goal (10-15 mins? 4-5 levels?) - if you can manage your food resources while evading enemies in order to stay alive long enough, you get to fly/catch a passing breeze to another orchard with a whole new set of variables
• Change levels premise - wind gust (wind of change) carries you to the next level or a new orchard. Advance after you stay alive long enough (sustain the food source). At level change time, a wind sound starts up and player controls stop working. The bugs hops on a ‘gust of wind’ graphic, saying “i'll try my luck in a different orchard and let this one rest a bit”
• Each level has:
• different tree combinations (orange, lemons and limes). The lower levels or easier versions would have a higher proportion of orange trees
• a different farmer (that runs at a different speed, aims more or less accurately, uses different pesticides, a vacuum?)
• There are also different or more or farther reaching birds? (they can sit in a tree for a while? They can turn around in mid flight?)
• In the last (2?) stages, the farmers introduce your natural enemy – the spider. Spiders have to run down trees and along the ground to get to the tree you’re in, but watch out if they get there – once they’re in the tree, they’re lightening fast, and the spider’s bite is deadly!
• As you progress to next level, you float past the sign to the new orchard, with the farmer's name and a description of the new situation
• Every time you pass X points, you get a new life
• Keyboard controller version: space bar is stop. Hold space bar to suck the orange power; click arrow once to start flying in that direction? Hold down to speed up? or hold down just to fly as long as you want? Or click to speed up? If you're mid flight and stop pressing, do you fall to the ground, to be stomped on by farmer? What if you run outs of energy mid flight? Die or get attacked to die (because you can't escape)? If you run out of energy and just fall to the ground, can you just walk along and crawl up a tree?

• Health indicator - signified by bug with more or less open wings? As you run out of health/energy, can the buzz sound when you fly start to run down at a lower tone, like a car running out of gas?
• There's an energy running out buzzer to warn the player they’re about to die
• 
  
• 'The end' – message/reward graphic: by getting there you've proven you can live sustainably, so you're allowed to go and breed more stink bugs and teach your off spring the way they need to treat their environment to live forever in harmony with the humans and the planet
• Premise of game - see if stink bugs are better than humans! But at the end it's revealed that they're better but only because they learned the sustainability lesson. If the farmers go down, so do you (just like in actual life for humans!)

Once I’ve figured out how to make this work, at the start I’m going to offer two bug versions – a brown bug (slower but birds don’t see as well) or an iridescent bug (pretty, flies a bit faster but the birds can pick it up/’see ‘it