I think the similarities with The Sims' UI could actually play in your favour, because Wobbledogs looks like the kind of game that can also appeal non-gamers. And The Sims is, by definition, the game even my mother tried to play once. So by looking similar it could actually feel less "menacing" and complicated, and help you reach a bigger audience
Yeah agreed, it's something that's worth leaning into to a certain extent.
this game looks good
Thanks!
I plan to eventually have multiple head types.
I misread this and pictured dogs with multiple heads for a moment. It was glorious.
We need Cerberus the Wobbledog!
a system where identical twins could be born out of one egg and in rarer cases conjoint twins would be really interesting
lol you guys are figuring out all my secrets... I've had this on my project tracker for a while now to try out at some point (we'll see what I can make work). If I do end up putting it in I probably won't show it off before release though. Gotta keep some mystery going.
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Ok, I think it's time to unpack some stuff. Anyone who's kept up with this thread is probably at least somewhat aware of how much of a tough time I've had trying to figure out what specifically you do in this game. I've tried a bunch of stuff, none of which has really stuck, and at more than one point I even said I was just gonna ignore gameplay all together in favor of a sandbox-first approach. I think I've finally found an approach that works so I wanna go over everything I've tried before, explain why I gave up on those ideas, and then go over what I'm gonna try to do instead.
So first of all, the failed prototypes.
Failed Prototype #1 - Dog Racing
Concept: Breed and train dogs for their racing prowess and watch them compete.
Positives:
- Fun to watch
- Takes advantage of physics
- Once the systems are in place, courses should be quick to make
- Could add a track editor for user-generated content
- Casual gameplay
Negatives:
- Only fun to watch the first few times or in short bursts. If your goal is to win rather than just observe it becomes even more tedious
- Very hard to tie the pen gameplay together with the race gameplay. How do you meaningfully raise a dog to do better at certain courses when their performance comes down to their base physics?
- My physical movement makes for very random outcomes even for more optimized dogs
Let me just start by saying that this prototype is still the closest to my heart. I honestly loved watching the dog races. The main problem, however, was still that the moment you needed a specific dog to win things stopped being entertaining. Races could take a while and retrying them was annoying. They were only really fun to watch if you didn't have much of a stake in who won. With my inconsistent movement physics I just don't believe I could've made this mode stay interesting for a whole game.
Failed Prototype #2 - Economy
Concept: Build and optimize a self-sustaining economy around your hive of dogs and their unique assets.
Positives:
- Complex automation gameplay
- No additional game modes needed
- Near infinite gameplay
Negatives:
- No moment-to-moment goals
- Potentially conflicting audiences
- Moves focus away from the dogs and their personalities
The idea here was to use the dogs to build a little self-sustaining economical system. Stuff like having the dogs lay eggs which auto-collection pipes would suck up and move to incubation chambers which you could then hatch or sell immediately. The main issue was that it took the focus away from the individual dogs and turned it to a larger overarching system. I also never came up with great ideas for more interlocking systems beyond the eggs. There was some stuff I floated around like the idea of breeding dogs for extra legs or fur, etc, but nothing ever really clicked. I think ultimately there's a disconnect between how long it takes the dogs to do things (because of their physical movement) and the efficiency you actually want for stuff like this to feel right (sort of a recurring theme with my prototypes). Anyways, I scrapped this as a core gameplay concept but there are elements I might still re-use, like the eggs themselves.
Failed Prototype #3 - Wilderness
Concept: Explore hand-crafted puzzle environments with your dogs.
Positives:
- Puzzles and exploration
- Opportunities for deep discovery and lore
Negatives:
- Very time consuming to set up levels
- Trying to directly control or issue commands to these dogs is aggressively not fun
The last point says it all, I think. Watching a physics dog try to do something on its own is entertaining even if (or especially if) they have a tough time doing it. Trying to get a physics dog to do a particular thing is extremely not entertaining if they have even the slightest bit of trouble.
Failed Prototype #4 - Arena
Concept: Dogs gain abilities based on their genes and then you send them to an arena to duke it out with other dogs.
Positives:
- Character and story opportunities
- Wonky physics aren't a huge issue because abilities can be hand-crafted and magical and separate from the dogs' movements.
- Fun opportunities to import and battle against other people's dogs.
Negatives:
- Violence, even if cartoony, felt a little at odds with the rest of this game's mood
- Prototyping was extremely time-consuming and slow. I didn't believe I'd have a good idea of whether or not this concept would work without at least a month of dedicated time.
This just didn't feel right. I couldn't get over the fact that forcing you to fight your dogs felt wrong for this project and I didn't want to spend an extended period of time on a prototype that might not even pan out.
Failed Prototype #5 - Tricks
Concept: Teach your dogs tricks.
Positives:
- Fun moment to moment possibilities
- Player-Dog bonding
Negatives:
- Couldn't come up with a meaningful way to implement this system
- Even if implemented perfectly it wouldn't be enough to drive an entire game
Thinking simultaneously too large and too small. Procedural physics-based tricks would be a huge huge complex system but even if I made it work it probably wouldn't be enough to drive the entire game.
Failed Prototype #6 - Dog Streaming
Concept: Each dog's life is being livestreamed to an in-fiction twitch platform. Gameplay revolves around keeping your viewers happy and collecting donations.
Positives:
- Funny concept
- Potential for funny choices. (Your viewers love it when you put squeaky shoes on your dog but it drives you crazy. Your viewers love a super fat dog but it's too fat to move so you have to painstakingly take care of it. etc.)
- Good high level goals
Negatives:
- Hard to define the system feedback loop
- Moment to moment gameplay still lacking
- Wasn't super excited about building it
Getting closer to something, but this didn't quite pan out. Ultimately I couldn't reconcile the actual goals with the player's desire. If the stream was always running you felt no pressure to do specific things. You just let the dogs do what you'd always let them do only now you don't even get to try specific things you might want to because you're beholden to "the viewers". If the stream only goes live at certain intervals then those specific moments would require boring setup from you (make sure the dogs aren't sleepy, put them in the right clothes, change your pen's wallpaper, etc) and you'd probably just end up dreading it.
Failed Prototype #7 - Capsule Laying
Concept: Dogs lay capsules periodically. Depending on a dog's genetic makeup a capsule will have a different pool of items it could potentially contain with corresponding rarities.
Positives:
- Simple
- Slot machine feedback loop
- Good high level goals (breed certain dogs to get certain items)
Negatives:
- Zero moment to moment engagement
- Hard to define which genes should map to which items/rarities
Not much to say about this one. It just ultimately wasn't super interesting. Good UI could've helped that a bit but it would've only wallpapered over the boring interior.
Failed Prototype #8 - Custom Scenarios
Concept: Click through a list of hand-crafted scenarios and poke around with them as much as you'd like before moving on. After viewing a scenario you unlock all the items used within it.
Positives:
- This is what I do anyways for setting up a lot of my gifs
- Can show the player the limits of all my systems
Negatives:
- How do you know how long to engage with something before moving on?
- What's the incentive to actually engaging with anything?
So close, but not quite. I had a bit of an epiphany at one point and thought to myself why not try to merge the game and the gifs I've already been making? Why not just set up a bunch of scenes that are literally just the scenarios I already create (sometimes on purpose and sometimes on accident) and share with everyone? Ultimately, it's still a little aimless and not quite worth going forward with, but this'll lead me to where I am now.
Current Concept - Commercials
(FYI: the graphics for the systems in this vid are almost entirely placeholder)
Concept: Raise your dogs and periodically employ them as actors in various commercials.
Positives:
- Funny concept
- Potential for a cast of characters and an actual story
- Show the player the limits of all my systems
- Drip-feed new items and unlocks as payment for commercial participation
- Casual, scaleable, and played out in very short bursts
- Gives breeding a point (certain commercials could have requirements)
- Space for fun and meaningful choices (e.g. we want your dog for this commercial but have to dye its fur first)
Negatives:
This is where I am now. You can probably see that this concept borrows a bunch of things from previous concepts I've explored, though it took me a while to get here specifically. After a few weeks of thought and prototyping I'm still feeling good about it too. It hits all of the major points I wanted my gameplay to hit and it just feels like the right direction to take things. The idea popped into my head late one night a few weeks ago and it immediately felt right to me. With this structure you'll always know your next goal, it'll slowly give you new objects over time, and you'll get a steady stream of funny scenarios that your dogs can literally star in.
Like, really, these types of things should just be in the actual game IMO, and with this structure they can be.
There's more I can talk about in terms of specifics but I think this post has gone on long enough. Basically, this feels like a game I know how to structure and make. It's gonna need a lot of work but there are some ways I can make things easier on myself, so I'm not overly terrified. I'm sure this concept will warp a bit over time, and it's possible I'll throw it out entirely, but it's absolutely the closest I've come to something legit so far and for now I'm gonna forge on ahead and see where things end up!
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