Some opinions about how out game is designed

Well this is a hard one to find something to write about, because I’ve been sick for a couple of days and when I’ve been here and worked I’ve pretty much only been working on the Customization screen, and I don’t really have anything interesting to say about that again. What I can say though is that a lot of it works right now.

So I’ll take this time to write a bit about my opinions on the game-design and what I like and don’t like about it, and how we would have made it if I was In charge.

First of all, the controls, many think that this is the biggest problem in our game; I don’t really agree with that, sure I don’t like them but our game have problems bigger than that. But let’s start with taking about the controls.

Like a lot of people have said it isn’t clear how the controls even work at first, sure this could be solved with some sort of tutorial-screen or just some visual clues in the game like footprints in a circle for example (we will probably add the latter), but the big problem is that there isn’t a single good reason for them to be that way, I don’t know but I would much rather use a Super Smash TV control-scheme (8-direction walking and shooting), if I remember correctly, sure it wouldn’t be original, but it beats a control-scheme that no-one likes.

I think that the biggest problem in our game right now is the upgrades, Right now we have upgrades that reset after every play through, but as it is right now they aren’t enough of them or enough difference in them to make the player want to play more than two-three of games if we’re lucky. The trinkets that we’ll soon add will probably add some variety in the game, but I don’t think that that is enough. What I would done is to make all upgrades carry over from game to game and your task is just to farm upgrades, I would also add a real currency to the game right now you use your score to buy upgrades, and the only reason that you shouldn’t buy them is that you get a lesser Highscore, and it is rare to see people that care about Highscores in 2014.

CookieClicker is a fucking fantastic example that people are willing to do the same trivial task over and over again just to see a number go up. It doesn’t really matter if the gameplay is shitty if the upgrades are interesting, but we’ve failed to do this too. By adding infinite enemies that get tougher and tougher and add some rewards for when you reach a certain point is something that I believe that people would appreciate much more than a game balanced around Highscore and the whole point is that you shouldn’t upgrade stuff if you want the highscore…

I would also like something like three base-suits and weapons that you can upgrade separately an infinite number of times to encourage the player to see how strong they can make the character.

Attack-Speed is also something that I would have added and have no idea why we don’t use it (we even have the option to use it in the fucking code already) but the best explanation to why we don’t use it is that it wouldn’t be balanced. Nothing is fucking balanced in out game yet, so that doesn’t fucking matter. I would understand why if the game was almost done and already balanced, but now stupid.

Well at least I still got the trinkets…

/Rant over.

Here is a picture of the menu showing of the new hover-effects, just because I need an image.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: 5SD023, 5SD033, Campus, design, game, gotland, Laban, Melander, programming, Universitet, University, Uppsala