Kyuugatsu, Thanks for the quote.
I am drawing many mock-up of the screens to test and fine-tune design ‘options’ like sprite size, explosion range… then computing some math to decide on health, damages, enemies speed, reload speed.. I have never built paper prototypes with tokens etc… but I think Hideo Kojima designed some levels of Metal Gear Solid using Lego to be sure of the lines of sight…
For another game (which I stopped for now), I have drawn levels on paper highlighting how the player would feel at each specific area (curious, stressed, proud, learning….) to make sure there is life in playing.
This is only me, but I have a tendency to think everything is clear in my head but as soon as I sit in from of my computer I realize I need to make many other important choices. Some can easily be decided (should player continue in the same direction or stop when no key is pressed), other can be tested in game (like what’s the best relative speed between player and enemies), other are more efficiently tackled on a shit of paper (because of the long time it would require to code, compile, arrive in your game to the specific point where you can see the actual in-game effect).
I do think that the best feedback happen from actually playing the game (even better by some-one else) but I like to get as close as possible to the best option before starting coding. Again, this is only me because I do not have that much experience. I guess the right decision come more easily to seasoned designer.
Thank you Panurge.
The age difference is a challenge and I may underestimate this. The little one would be frustrated if the game is too hard and the older one bored if it is too simple. My plan is to have an adaptive level of difficulty; tuning automatically number of enemies, health points etc… during level based on how the player performs (which I usually do not like because it does motivate to improve and surpass difficulties). I also need to work on death transitions to make them encouraging enough.
It is true that the idea of a cooperative play is appealing : 1-this could be interesting to see how the 2 of them organize 2-this is a solution when the two fight over my tablet (which is I think a universal issue around children). PS : I like the ‘Space Monkeys Escape Doctor Doom’ title and the ‘shooting instructions’ description