Game Development Update #2

Well, hello there!
Welcome back for another peek into the splendid game called Samsara. For all of you out there who just jumped aboard and have no clue what this is all about, please have a look at the previous post called “Game Development Update #1″.

*geee* I’m so excited, Ted! Tell me ASAP what you’ve been up to this week!
Hold your horses, I’ll get right to it! This week I play tested the game and experimented with the overall level design. As of right now in terms of level design, this experiment session strictly focused on core aspects such as enemy spawn patterns, time between spawns, number of enemy types and so forth.

Cool, but didn’t that totally change how the game is played?
It certainly did and that’s why I did it. I needed to adjust the game’s difficulty by incrementally increasing the difficulty to reflect the player’s gradually improving skills. As the player get more confident he/she requires greater challenges. Before I began with balance tweaking, the game was a steep uphill struggle from start to finish which was neither fun nor good for play testing purposes. The reason why I felt the urge to experiment with balance this week was because of the feedback we had previously received from a play test session. One person said that you as the player felt to be at a disadvantage because of the speed of the enemy projectiles. We had also gotten the feedback that the play area felt cramped.

Later on the team adjusted the speed of the enemy projectile and it made a whole world full of change. All of a sudden you had the ability to not only stay alive but also move more freely. Before this change, you always had to hug the left hand side of the play area because of how fast the projectiles moved and how many enemies there were. After the change though, you could move freely across the screen and it actually felt like you skilfully dodged projectiles instead of jumping out of their way in pure panic. Such a minor tweak turned out to be a major upswing in terms of perceived aesthetics and game balance. That’s when I truly committed to experiment with small values to gain great results.

What a joke, tweaking numbers, hah!
That’s a possible thought but when you see the difference you’ll become a believer.

Hmm, I guess I can agree to the part about small things having great impact. How did you do it then?
They sure do. Well, this week I wanted to start off small and only make an introduction to a level. Hence, it felt logical to introduce the first and most common enemies the player would face in the level. To do that I made it so that the spawn script only chooses between two enemies. Then I placed three spawn points to create simple position patterns for the player to initially learn and adapt to. I placed the spawn points at the top, middle and bottom of the screen to get an even distribution.

The spawn point placed in the middle will spawn enemies right in front of the player. That’s why I assigned the levels first and most prominent enemy, the elephant, in that lane since he needs to be given the most attention. The upper and lower spawn points produce the minor enemies, in this case small dark clouds, who act as obstacles and easy practise targets for the player. After that I decided on the number of enemies the wave should consist of and how long time it should be between each enemy spawn. I gave the player plenty of time to react, between five to ten second before spawning any new major enemy. This generous time in combination with how I positioned the spawn points made it easy to get into a flow and learn the properties of the first enemies. With everything up and running, the result was a simple yet effective introduction to a level and its challenges.

Neat! Now, how would you summarize this week’s design adventures?
It has been an interesting week which has contributed with great insights into level design. I carry with me the realization of how small changes can affect the player in more than one way.

Thanks Ted for the update. Next week, same day, same time as usual?
You bet.

That’s all for now, folks. Thank you all for having a look at this week’s endeavours. See you next week, cheers!

About Ted Fristedt

2016 Game Design

View all posts by Ted Fristedt →