Mirror with better quality :
https://streamable.com/8uo4zHi!
Today I am writing a lengthy analysis on my game's Stage 2. The reason for this is that I decided to completely rework its enemy waves and the design process behind this seemed interesting to document so there we go!
For reference, here are the old and new versions of the Stage.
New :
Old :
Around a month ago, I finished a first version of Stage 3 which seemed pretty fun to play. As I was play(test)ing the game and its three stages over and over again, I noticed something. I liked playing Stage 1 to try to get a higher score as it's a short ~1m20 challenge. I enjoyed playing Stage 3 with its variety of enemies and locales. But Stage 2 for some reason was much less played. Subconsciously, I didn't want to play it as much.
Why is that? That's goddamn weird. Every stage of the game has to be fun. Every single one should make me want to play it. Something's not right.
So I wondered why it wasn't that fun and analyzed that problem by comparing Stage 2 with the other stages. Why are those much more fun than this one? The answers I found mostly boiled down to two things : pacing and variety.
Stage 1 is seperated into two 30 second-long halves, with mostly small and medium enemies in the first half, a mid-boss in the middle and then bigger enemies accompanied by the previously introduced small enemies. This creates a sense of progression because the first half feels like a fast-paced introduction to the game in general and when you are comfortable with it, you've got tougher enemies that spawn. While every single one the enemies before the midboss could be killed in one sword strike, now there's a pink tank that can endure around three slashes, which changes the feeling you get from the waves. Another enemy introduced is an orange pistol drone that fires long bullets forward, while all of the previous enemy types fired circular aimed bullets. Those reduce your mobility potential in a different way and shake things up. You can kill them easily but you have to move near the right side and take risks.
Stage 3 also adheres to that design philosophy with various "segments" that each have exclusive or new specific enemy types and are accompanied by small fry that you are already familiar with, or even some new small fry.
So what's the problem with Stage 2 ? Well, it lasts twice as long as Stage 1 but the changes in the enemy waves and enemy types are not that drastic. Which is weird because given the added length, it should actually feature even more changes. In the one minute-long first half of the stage, only two new enemy types are there : the blue planes and the pink sunfish enemy. The blue planes are interesting IMO because they spawn from behind and thus make you sometimes fall back near the middle instead of always being on the right side. The sunfish is not bad but it's a popcorn enemy. None of these two enemies are enough to carry an entire minute of content, so the waves recycle lots of already-seen enemy types. While those waves' configurations are different from Stage 1 and some challenges they create are new, the sense of discovering a new enemy type is not there at all.
The second half of the stage also has to do with only one new enemy type, the little blue drone that fires a 4-bullet cluster. But that's a just a popcorn enemy, and yet I treated it as a big enemy in the way it is introduced as a special thing instead of being there to accompany something bigger.
Stage 1, being the first stage, introduces around 8 enemy types, but Stage 2 only had...3, and none of them are big enemies. Thanks to the caravan scoring and the wave pacing, the stage still managed to be playable and relatively enjoyable of course, but deep within my heart (lol) I knew something felt off, and that's why.
What did I do then? Well, introduce more enemy types for starters! Stage 2 now has 10 enemy types in it, with a mix between popcorn and mid/big enemies. Thus, this allows me to make those short segments within the stage that feature specific enemies and then move on to the next big enemy type without stretching and padding the potential of the previous enemy type for too long. The first and second half of the stage also feel more distinct thanks to that. It's important to have memorable moments and parts in your stages and those different enemy types with different patterns help a lot. Now the entire stage has a real identity with its exclusive enemies. And it even has a recurring theme in most of its enemy visual designs, will you find it? It's rather easy to guess actually.
The second thing that I did was increase the amount of cake slices the pink popcorn enemies give. It recharges the bomb a bit faster and thus improves the pacing by giving you more quick-kill opportunities.
Ultimately, you'll be the ones to see if it's genuinely more fun when the next demo releases, but so far I like playing Stage 2 again. Hopefully you will, too.
And thanks for reading!
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