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Devlog 79: No Longer a Platformer


... and tons of games were pixel art platformers. I mean tons. I mean regular platformers and metroidvania and rogue like games.

It slowly dawned on me then that my game would just be a speck lost in a galaxy of similar games. The same jumping mechanics, bosses, platform jumping etc… I’ve long lost interest in the platforming genre due to what I feel is its repetitiveness. I mean, I would never spend some of my time playing one unless it really put forward something really, really unique and creative.

This led me to the conclusion that my game would likely be just one among many. Probably somewhat successful but nothing unique.

I thought that the idea of doing something “average” was really depressing and really not what I was going for with this game. I’ve always been interested in the more “experimental” games and yet I was working on something which was painfully common.

3. I think that, if this had been the only issue, I could have gone along with it and force myself to finish it. But besides the drop of motivation that came with doing a platformer, I realized I strongly disliked designing levels. Level design is really not my thing. It doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I also find the obligation of tiling everything to be sort of break on my creativity at times.

4. When I started working on a platformer, I believed it would be a good pick because it would be simple to code. Man was I wrong. Tons of bugs were appearing and it was becoming increasing frustrating to not only have more and more bugs as the game development went along, but painful to see that bugs who were supposed to have been fixed weren’t. That was a total pain in the neck. Physics weren’t realistic and tons of bugs remained even after a lot of beta testing.

So, what's next? In devlog 80, I'll explain what the new concept of the game will be about. But I can tell you it'll be a mix of side-view rpg inspired by Super Mario RPG but which is also educational. Sounds weird? Might be! But I can assure you it'll be unique. It might fail, but at least it'll be a breath of fresh air!

Also, some recent animations:








Stay tuned!

Posts

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orochii
6740
04/08/2016 06:43 PM
Just in case remember to save what you have now. I think it sometimes happen that you ponder it a lot and make a decision, but then later decide to go back.

There is a video I saw some months ago that pretty much talks about your second reason (and the first one). The amount of platformers that exist. It's a video made by TotalBiscuit, which is based on an article made by the creator of Airscape.

I wish you success. And I'm eager to see what your idea is. It's kind of weird, yeah! The educational genre is pretty uncommon, I think, away from those lazy minigame collections from the 80s/90s. I don't know.
Toaster_Team
966
04/08/2016 11:36 PM
Hi, orochii,

The game will focus around learning vocabulary for a language. I've been both in Japan and China so I'm unsure which one to pick.

Japanese generally interests people more. On the other hand, it's not as much as a niche as Chinese.

The concept is fairly simple. Interactive battles just like in Super Mario RPG. Instead of having to press button as specific times, the player needs to be able to read whatever word is on screen. A good answer increases the power of the attack, a wrong answer does nothing.

When attacking, the player has a time limit determined by his speed vs the opponent speed. Slower opponents give more time to the player to attack while nimble foes dramatically reduce the time allow to attack.

Suppose you manage to get three words right during the attacking phase with a timer set to 10 seconds because of your agility, the damage output of your attack will be influenced by those three good answers.

On the other hand, getting wrong answers during that time will reduce the damage output or even cause a "miss".

Each attack has its own set of words. For the flamethrower, you have, say, 10 words in your word bank. Those words will appear randomly when you attack your foe. Same thing with every attack in the game.

Since every attack will induce a certain type of damage (crushing/slashing/etc), players will be encouraged to vary their attacks to adapt to the vulnerabilities of various foes.

Defense works the same way. You have a certain amount of time to boost your defense by getting as many words right during the time limit. The more you get, the more your defense is effective and the fewer damage you take.

I'm aiming at an episodic format based on the difficulty level. The words included in the database will be the most frequently used words in said language. So learning those words will be useful for sure.

It will also be fun for people interested in learning the Chinese Characters 漢字. For example, one the word you could see:


卵(egg)
Then you would need to type たまご (tamago) to score a hit. Getting a right answer would show the next word in the word bank of that attack, say:

水(water)
みず (mizu)

Well, I've rambled long enough. You get the idea I'm sure. It'd be neat to learn vocabulary while having fun.

kentona
Bunnyhug
21027
04/20/2016 02:34 PM
I would actually recommend shelving those ideas for a future game and concentrate on finishing this one as is to original spec.

http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game

Please read before changing course.
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