It’s been just over a week since I put the 0.2 build out! The results are in, or well, not exactly, if I’m honest around 30 people downloaded it and no one left any comments, which was pretty disheartening I won’t lie, but as a couple of friends pointed out I didn’t really do much marketing on it, and whilst the release went smoothly, I know there’s a lot of things I want to do differently so that if one day I do get enough eyes on it, it’ll be in a condition that’ll wow people.
This post feels a bit weird, it’s like I’m back in secondary school (I’m from the UK I’m sorry) where after an assignment you have to write a bit at the end where you say what you liked, what you didn’t like and what would you do differently next time round.
Writing isn’t my strongest suit but I’ll try my best to articulate my thoughts and plans for anyone that is interested.
What Did I Like About 0.2?
I was able to give myself a week of cleanup when the demo was ‘ready’ so I wasn’t stressing out on getting it out the door and constantly panicking to fix stuff like before. That said I was pretty busy that week, updating sprites, rewriting dialogue, cleaning up small bugs and working on the endless to do list, picking out what was important to focus on for this release.
The game feels a lot better to control now, I tried to replay the 0.1 prototype build and I was astonished I had any confidence to put that thing out the way I did! The character felt too heavy when jumping, the bounce back when you get hit was too strong, somehow I didn’t include a jump buffer, and the oddest thing I did was make it so the player couldn’t dash unless they’re in the air, which I did regret upon release because it confused a lot of players, 0.2 fixes on all of these, with such a huge difference I will actively say avoid touching that prototype unless you’re interested in the history of this game.
Other things I like was being able to include an overworld map, NPCs where you can interact with, shops, a third powerup and really start to lay out the plans for what this game will shape up to be, to me this is a great starting point to build the full game on.
I was also quite happy with how both levels and the bosses turned out, a lot of work went into reiterating the rooms, from getting the right size, the right balance of obstacles/challenge and keeping the flow smooth whenever a player goes through it, I went into detail about the level design in this post here so I won’t go off about that again.
And I was quite happy with how this trailer together turned out in the end, I wasn’t going to make one originally but I had enough free time to do it and the feedback on that was very positive!
What Did I Dislike About 0.2?
After the release I did end up posting the build in various game dev servers, in hopes someone would play it, and two people left feedback which lined up with a lot of things I sort of noticed with the 20+ play testers but it slipped all our minds: Which is the game is pretty punishing, one friend irl said out loud ‘oh you gotta start again??’ when they died the first time in the 3rd room of the 1st level, meaning they didn’t know a checkpoint existed until they eventually got there after a few tries. I thought a checkpoint system was good enough but I realise people don’t like redoing these rooms over, specially if it’s the first level!
If you’re wondering how something like that slipped pass, its mostly that most play testers and friends have touched the game a few times in the past, they’re use to the mechanics and what to expect from the game.
On a related note when you start a new game, it throws you into the first level, and if players give up there, they won’t even see the overworld or the map select! This isn’t a complaint anyone had but its something I worry about given the previous point on difficulty.
There is of course, options to start in the same room you last died in and another which restores your health every time you enter a new room, but its in the assist mode options, which I noticed no one pressed or checked, and when the play testers are told about it, they turn it on right away and have a lot more fun, a friend also brought this assist option as a positive when they played the 0.1 build and said it was a nice option to have and helped them a lot.
Other issues I had with the game are tied to sprites and animations, I wanted to redo Magician City (the place with shops and filled with random NPCs) but the sprite work, such as the two shop buildings need rework, and I realised another part to why I didn’t click with the area was due to the design of that place being one long side scrolling room with very little platforming, yeah its a city with shops but there isn’t much to explore right?
I realised this after I made the Magicians Lair, where I was having fun running around in that because I made it a bit open area to explore, (the only issue with that place is that its kind of empty at the moment and I wanted to do its own unique tile set and backgrounds, rather than using the same old one)
What I will do differently and the future of the game:
I was thinking about how to write this section but I think it’s best to provide a list so its easier on the eyes since most points here will be reflected in the next version of the demo/game:
- Assist options will be merged with the core gameplay, so when the player dies they’ll restart in the same room they were last in.
- To balance this, the default amount of lives will drop to 3 instead of 5, I found that this way there’s still enough wiggle room to get through and still the right amount of challenge to get something out of it.
- Related to the other points I made it so the second assist option ‘when you go into a new room, restore health’ is scrapped from the merge, the reason is tied to achievements, for example level 1 has an achievement where you gotta “beat the level without dying once” this is super easy if you’re health keeps restoring every room you go to, and to a player who may not care about getting this, dying wouldn’t set them back, this is only a challenge to players seeking it out. (additionally it gives players an incentive to come back when they upgrade their max health from the shops etc)
- To tackle the boss issue, the checkpoint will be repurposed as an optional health boost since the boss fight would be too difficult with low health.
- More pixel art stuff! Making the levels look nicer and improve my overall art style, there’s a lot of little details I wanted to add but didn’t get time, so I want to improve on the sprite work and animations so they look much nicer, and fit the aesthetics for my game.
- Made a tutorial room, I want to reapproach how to teach the player the mechanics whilst allowing them to explore places before jumping right into level 1 (and to see the overworld map etc) since the controls are fairly easy at first, I made a single room play test area which you can see below.
- Collectables, this was sorta in the old build, tho there’s even OLDER build from back when the game was developed in unity where there were breakable blocks with collectable Vinyls for a sound test idea, I decided to bring that back, how it gets implemented it something I’ll figure out and play around with, you can also see this in the video below.
- Achievements, this is a new thing, and I won’t lie I basically took the idea from Pizza Tower, which I really enjoy trying to get those achievements in that game, so in each level you can get 3 achievements, minus the tutorial room which has one, I will expand on that in a future post if the idea works or doesn’t work and it ends up being scrapped, but it helps to provide an optional challenge to players so will see how that goes.
There’s a much larger list here, but I gotta focus on building Level 3 and 4 the next few months, so I’ll be doing another post to keep updated on where I am with this project.
The points I made above might change or may not work out so don’t take that as a promise it’ll be in the final game, game dev is a wild ride and I know for a fact what I see now will not be the same a year from now.
Thank you for taking time to read this, it means a lot to me that the small number of people who do play and enjoy this game is looking forward to more, and I’ll keep working hard to make sure this game is something special one day. (I hope!)
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