A 2d top-down surreal space rails shooter game I wanted to make but never completed.

Here are some notes I had on the game, to paint a picture of the atmosphere the game intended to convey.

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there was a large alien spaceship carrying a huge payload of strange technology that was damaged and set adrift, spreading a field of debris over a large portion of space. this is the main overworld map. each "level" is a denser cluster of debris. the debris is made up of mostly damaged materials that have weird various properties. most of the properties are passive or useful in nature, and are only inadvertently destructive, suggesting that the original aliens were a mostly peaceful race. the debris field has been adrift for so long that the pilots of the ship, and their whole species, no longer exist.

a weird ecosystem of small bird-sized creature has developed inside the debris, where they've adapated and even merged with the technology. the result is bizzarre hybrid of space-faring organic creatures mixed with digital and mechanical technology. the sound effects for these creatures should be very digital and alien in origin, small sounding, but manually rhythmically chopped up to immitate the sound of birds like the kookoboora. the creatures have little gameplay impact and are mostly for ambience, lurking in the debris, but do ocassionally come into play.

but there is now a "tribe" of less advanced, more aggressive and larger scarier creatures that live in empty space (as opposed to on a planet) that is scavenging the wreckage for technology. these are the main antagonist (whereas the small creatures are non-threatening and just living in their habitat). they will be the bosses. they also have smaller "cronies" or are the main enemy drones flying through each level.

you, the player, fly a ship with just a single laser which can be aimed, and maybe 1-2 basic dodges or defensive manuevers. the rest of your abilities come from firing your laser at the various glass mirrors and weird technology in the wreckage to modify the beam and accomplish different tasks (see sketches), such as hitting switches, pushing away deadly fog, killing enemies with special fire lasers, or putting a shield on your ship. you are presumably navigating the debris to find the scavenger tribe.

to be left ambiguous (to the player and the developer, ie dont take an official stance):
- the nature of the aliens who originally created the technology and flew the ship, and what exactly went wrong
- the exact nature of what the scavenger "tribe" finds and what the final boss is guarding, though it can be guessed to be a large power source, possibly to be used for a weapon
- who the main player is and why they want to prevent the tribe from getting the technology, though presumed to be yet another alien species and presumed to be doing it to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong hands

everything else i've said needs to be conveyed or suggested somehow, without text... instead through environment, through overworld background, through a visual cutscene maybe, etc.

also when i say creatures or aliens, don't mean all humanoid like in star trek. nor the tentacle monster aliens from the simpsons. needs to be something more unsettling and abstract. something you could really not imagine, something unimaginably weird that you might actually find in the ouskirts of the real universe. have to get into a unique cosmic headspace to come up with this.

music gets darker and darker closer to the final boss area

final boss

before it, a stretch of emptiness. very very slowly, music of just the haunting choir pads from the final boss music, without any of the other instruments, fades in and builds up. very bare and mysterious and unsettling. just those two pad chords back and forth. some easy enemies come in and make player think "hmm why is this so easy. something's not right...". then finally player comes across some big thing that we've supposedly been doing this whole game for (traveling to the area near the final boss). some kind of weird element/compound crystal that almost looks like it's living (lights pulse around the large, like flowing blood). little machines are surrounding it, apparently studying it. this is the final boss studying the element/creature after having discovered it. music stops. upon approaching it, the player hear's the surreal screech of the final boss transmitting his warning to stay away over the comm system. the thing starts vibrating and glowing more intensely, then disappears instantly because it has been transported away by the final boss (the visual effect of this should be the main sprite disappearing instantly, but a barely visible blurred glowing afterimage resonating there for a second or two). the final boss glides in with the sound of only soft humming of his engines. final boss music begins. boss says some disturbing indistinguishable things that sound angry and distressed. battle begins.
instead of suddenly dropping dead in an epic fashion by passing some arbitrary amount of damage on a damage meter, he's killed by destroying his different defences systematically, with one hit/action for each. (progressive damage like a damage meter can be simulated by having to "penetrate through" many smaller enemies surrounding him). the last hit should be something that vaporizes his innards, somewhat quickly and anticlimactic, like real life death can be. shouldn't be with huge explosions and fireballs and yelling ahhhh, but in a visceral "snuffing out life" way that is sudden, with maybe a quick whimper or yelp. perhaps the two last hits could be to shatter his glass exoskeleton into many pieces which then float around him, then firing into the cloud of glass shatters which splits your laser up into thousands more and vaporizes the innards. music cuts out right before the fire to shatter the exoskeleton happens to bring focus to the quick death that might be missed otherwise (in final.wav, right before the ending choir pads come in).
after this, the final task is to destroy the crystal as one last quick puzzle using some surrounding debris tech, possibly while being pestered by the last small pawns/henchman creatures trying to defend it in a last stand. when destroyed, the ending choir pads from final.wav play, and the game is over. music chords are purposely not directly triumphant, more like indifferent mission accomplished by a logical race for some unknown reasons

backstories for enemies/characters, but not in a typical human sense, creatures evolved and merged with things and gained properties, did things for survival or logical reasons. for example, why does the final boss have an exoskeleton made of the same glass technology that the other extinct alien race had developed...? come up with backstory explanation for this, like he is a descendant of the original aliens, or he mutated with the debris field, etc.

one level:

you protect another ship that runs through the level behind you, it has no defenses

bosses

communicate over the comm system, but none of them speak english, so their words come up as question marks in the comm textbox, or random unknown symbols. their voices will be made using human voices speaking gibberish and heavily processed to sound alien or robotic and distorted, as if they are speaking a different language. the sound is meant to be somewhat disturbing/creeepy/surreal. the more unique this sound can be, the better. not the typical pitch shifted layered alien voice you hear in movies.

incentive to kill enemies by bouncing off of mirrors instead of just directly (assuming normal unmodified laser can kill them at all), is that bouncing it off a mirror can kill two separate rows of enemies simultaneously, which if not killed simultaneously, would have time to fire and badly damage you.