TL;DR: Skip to the end for some current gameplay footage.As promised, here is the first of hopefully many devlogs to come. I'll try to be as honest as possible.
Last we spoke I had just signed a publisher, I had just moved to 3d. I also started taking one day off work each week to work on the game. Things were looking great, I had tons of fun making the game. I even streamed a bunch of it's development on twitch.
Missing the HookWithin a few meetings with my publisher, it was pretty clear that the game was missing a hook. There was no story, no super unique gameplay mechanic, not hundreds of guns, not tons of characters, no overarching unifying theme. The game played well minute to minute, but it needed something to make people say "oh, I know that game, it's the one with <blank>". Back when I started working on this, the genre was wide open. Since then there has been a flood of awesome titles. Nuclear Throne (that game where you mutate), Cryptark (that game where you infiltrate massive spaceships), Enter the Gungeon (that game where everything is gun-puns. Also: Much soon! Very excite! Woop!) etc.
It turns out, tacking on a "hook" midway through the development and design of a project isn't all that simple. Here are two of the ideas I tried out:
Collectible cards - Character switchingThe game would feature tons of characters (50+) each with a unique loadout of spells. You would find new characters pretty much every run, and you could cycle through your characters mid battle at the push of a button. The idea itself isn't all that bad, but it would involve a shit ton of work to make all the characters. I was already pressed for time so I put that one on the back burner.
Magic orbsOn your adventure you would find Magic orbs that enabled you to cast spells. These would be placed in slots on the face of your spellbook. There were also Augment orbs that altered the spells you put in there. It could be 'Reduce mana cost' or 'Trigger spell when hit' etc. It was obviously inspired by the materia system in Final Fantasy VII, one of my favorite games growing up. I loved this idea conceptually as you had tons of replayability and exploration between which orbs you got. The major problem is that it breaks up the game play, with what is essentially inventory management. I want this to be a fast paced action game, not MS Excel.
So where am I at now? I still don't know what the hook is.
I have some ideas for a story line and Setting that might feel a bit "hooky".
Real life (tm)To complicate things further, real life reared it's cute little head in the shape of Girlfriend Finally Pregnant. We had been working on that for a while so we were especially happy when we saw the two blue stripes on the test
This, however also lead to selling the apartment and buying a house. We are now finally up and running in the new house, and the sale of the aparment will be finalized next week. This has all been more time consuming than one could think, but I should soon be back on my usual dev schedule.
The view from my new home office, as I write thisPlatformsI am exploring Twin Analog Sticks as primary control method. I didn't think I would like it but it quickly became my favorite way of controlling the game. The game is also running on actual non PC hardware. I'll say no more at this point.
Current stateI would say that the game has gone back to a pre-alpha prototype stage.
Level generation is decent (I'll do a whole separate post on the current method soon).
Player controls just fine.
Enemies are few and stupid as dirt but good enough for now.
Graphics look pretty cool.
One of the ways that this game sticks out a bit from the herd is the 3d verticality. To emphasize this a bit I actually added jumping and grenades that are thrown in an arc. I started playing Destiny quite recently, and I felt super bad ass vaulting over enemies with double jumps and raining death from above. It feels pretty sweet in Tiny Wizard as well. Also gives you another option to circle strafing around the enemies. Maybe I should borrow Downwells gunboots as well? :D
Some recent gameplayPew pew! Let me know what you think!
Did you like any of the failed ideas?
How about jumping in 3/4 view, good/anus?
Keep me honest and motivated!
/Hannes