All right, vacation is over. I return here with a refreshed perspective on this project. All those things that were cooking at the back of my mind finally found their voice.
Here is the situation with apple and worm, if anyone cares to read another giant wall of text.
I am an adept of iterative game design. You implement some basic mechanics without worrying about how they will work with each other and start playing around until something new emerges. Here you stray from the planned path if you find something interesting along the way. The problem is that this project took way too long to implement the ground-level mechanics before I could start playing around with it. Years! Sure, it's a hobby project and I was a grad student etc, but still, the main time sink is the complex implementation required to bring the basic idea to life. The first incarnation was not intuitive to most people who played it, and the second implementation stretched my programming skills down to a transparently thin string and took way too long. What I'm saying is, I am finally at the stage where one would ideally be after a week working on a prototype. This is a little demoralizing because, as I wrote before, the base mechanic is insufficient and more is required. A lot of people disagree but I disagree back.
I remember Tom Francis describing a similar experience with Heat Signature. He implemented procedural ships, galaxy generation, factions. He spent years getting all this stuff together expecting something interesting to emerge. And it did eventually, but it took quite some time. And when it did, it almost rendered most of those features irrelevant; it was one of the simplest things: the fighting mechanic stood out.
This is not a (project) suicide note though! But I do think I need to stop making levels and start experimenting more. I instinctively realized that during the levelthon and prioritized implementing new things over making levels. The buttportals was a nice start; it proved to be not fun or interesting but this is the way to go now. This project needs to find its thing(s). The thing that I play and go "aah this is fun!", not just "ah... this has potential".
The best thing to come out of the levelthon, by far, was swallowing objects. This made the game objectively more fun to play! I find myself playing that big arena level with a single box and some curves just for fun. I keep trying to find new ways to swallow the box that will take me to new places. So I need more of this.
Instead of levelthon I will do a month-long prototyping marathon. My only ground rule now is to make use of curved space, otherwise what's the point? Other than that nothing is sacred, not even the main character. I am so attached to smiley apple but I want to try other things, like controlling a physics rolling ball, or a commando-like dude running and gunning. Always wondered how shooting would work here.
But I want to save the more drastic experimentation for later. For now I am going try mirroring Mario gameplay and design philosophy; they get so much mileage from simple mechanics by introducing a gimmick every x levels. I might have to ditch that peaceful philosophy out the window for now too. Let's murder some goombas, I guess! No danger at all is too strong a constraint, I noticed.
I should make a list of things I want to try.
Further exploration of swallowing and spitting:
- Magnetic objects. Swallow metallic thing, giant magnets that turn on/off periodically will affect player. Or swallow magnetic thing and metallic objects follow you. Or swallow magnet in one orientation (+ up and - down) and other magnets will push/repel you accordingly.
- Swallow something that makes creatures follow you, like birds after seeds.
Non-swallow/spit related:
- Water. I thought about water before but the prospect of implementing it puts me off every time. Still, it warrants consideration.
- Two things I already implemented and forgot about: the logical trapdoor and the rotating platform. The rotating platform is in the original demo with spikes. I might try with spikes or springs or just different shapes.
- The big scary idea: ditch the level structure and make the game a giant metroidvania! this is the scariest idea I ever had and it's been with the project since inception. But I have to admit, it might be the winning idea. Instead of acquiring a new skill at the end of a long exploration, you acquire a different orientation, allowing you to backtrack to where you were and explore new places. I ditched this idea a long time ago for the very obvious scope explosion (also, large maps will probably perform terribly with my shitty engine)
For 30 days this might be enough (probably too many). If not, I can think of more things. Suggestions are welcome, of course
Since implementing these things is harder than making a level I will not update this every day. But at least one new mechanic must be implemented, tested, and judged every week. So there will be a weekly report. Today is friday, so next friday is the first out of four reports.
Thanks for reading