Core Fling
Personal Project
A fixed-angle 2.5D team shooter where your weak point is also how you score. Throw your living core toward the opposing goal while your body stays in the fight.
- Format
- 2v2 · Three-minute matches
- Engine
- Unity
- Focus
- Combat systems · Level design · Team tactics
Gameplay
Carry, throw and recall
Shots knock back a body with a core. A detached body can push through ordinary gunfire without knockback, while its exposed core can be hit and knocked out after three hits. The core slides, slows down and bounces off walls. Cover can stop its return path, so the player may need to move to catch it.
Read the fight
Check who is carrying a core and find an angle.
Commit
Use gunfire, movement or a core throw to create space.
Resolve
Intercept, recall or land the throw to score.
Return to read the fight
Prototype scoring and recall rules
A valid throw starts at least 11 metres from the opposing goal. A sliding core scores inside the 1.5-metre receiving circle. After a goal, everyone returns to spawn and the match clock pauses for the roughly two-second reset.
Players can recall manually. A core recalls automatically beyond 12 metres or after 3.5 seconds away. It times out after 7 seconds away, and there is a 1.5-second delay after catching it before the next throw.
Design focus
A second position to defend
Throwing the core lets a player take ground with their body while exposing a separate target. That split changes what both teams can shoot, protect or recover during an attack.
A sport with a local history
The proposed setting follows residents whose living cores sit inside cultivated shells. They once used receiving flowers to exchange symbiotic microbes. In the arena, teams compete to land their cores in the flower at the opposite end.
Roles
Three abilities to shape the fight
Scout. Scans for opponents and detached cores, or leaves a station to scan repeatedly.
Decoy. Dashes away from a body double and can swap places with it if the path is clear.
Controller. Slows enemies in a target area and can retreat along its recent path.
Level design
One arena with three approaches
Each end has a courtyard with a spawn area and receiving circle. The central bridge leads to the main firefight. An upper loop opens a flank, and the lower route uses offset bridges and platforms to break long sightlines and give players room to recover a core.
Tactical breakdown
Split pressure at the bridge
Slide a core toward side cover and move the body up to contest the bridge. If a defender turns to shoot the exposed core, a teammate can approach the goal from the upper loop. If a wall cuts off the recall, the throwing player has to reposition before recovering the core.
Technical implementation
Planar rules and clear states
Movement, shots, core trajectories and scoring share a plane under the fixed oblique camera. The rules track carried, sliding and returning cores. Only a valid outbound throw can score, and a hit or blocked return can change what the player has to do next.
Practice and network entry points
The Paper Playground v0.7 prototype supports solo practice and includes host and client entry points. Core and receiving-circle readability, and match behaviour across devices, remain playtest targets.
Development
One map, three roles, one mode
The prototype implements throws, recalls, interceptions, role abilities and score resets. A human 2v2 playtest will check whether new players can recover and score with the core, whether a two-player defence can be broken, and whether hiding the core is too safe.
The current paper-character prototype will inform how the shell, exposed core and receiving flower read at match camera distance.
Core Fling
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