One of the things I’ve done recently is to keep the game as simple as possible. I’ve spent a lot (A LOT) of time brainstorming, designing, testing out ideas, trying to come up with cool concepts. Many interesting ideas have come up – almost too many. It got to the point where I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was paralyzed by choice.
This was about a month or two ago. Since then, on the advice of people close to me, I started simplifying. I stopped focusing on making the absolute best game, and just focused on making a game. Start small, start simple, and then go from there. Get the absolute basics going, and build from there.
So that’s what I’ve done. Right now the game is a simple platformer: collect resources and reach the exit in the level. Nothing particular complex about that, but it got me moving. Now that I have a simple game framework, I am free to continue experimenting. I have lots of little ideas, and a couple major ones.
One in particular has resurfaced in the past week, triggered by an interesting piece of feedback. The simple game is too simple. It isn’t clear to the user why he needs to collect these resources. There’s no payoff. There doesn’t appear to be an aim to the game. So I’m trying to address that in several ways. I want to explore how the user can affect his environment through their actions.
I have a few more days of pure development time available to me (before I switch to content production and polish), and this is one of the ideas I am experimenting with. It has the potential to add more depth to the game, in a cool way (if executed correctly).
Work Done Last Week
I spent a while drilling down on some of the feedback. The useful feedback covered several areas, from aesthetics and user interface to gameplay and level design. Some of the feedback was universal as well: the control scheme is awkward and unclear. It also isn’t always clear whether a user action is working.
I added basic support for audio, writing an audio manager and incorporating SDL_mixer. I chose SDL_mixer over FMOD as it seemed like the simplest interface to implement, but I’d like to move to FMOD when I have a bit more time (primarily for their excellent cross-platform support).
I worked on the level progression logic, the home screen, and the code to tie it all together; boring but necessary work.
I’ve done a bit of work on improving the gameplay, fixing some bugs, and improving the visual feedback. It’s still not perfect, but it’s getting there.
I didn’t progress far enough to put a new build together, but I’m working on one, and will be sent out soon.
Work Planned This Week
There’s a lot of work ahead. I will continue working on the audio, adding audio effects. I have interesting things planned for the audio, but I don’t expect to be able to implement more than a basic system by the submission deadline. I hope to discuss these ideas at a later time.
I will also experiment on the tech for the game idea briefly discussed above, as well as a couple other smaller ideas. Hopefully a few of them will stick and be included in the demo.
I will continue working on the Help system and polishing the gameplay.
