#bookreading

Importance of Book Reading Let’s rephrase the question: Is reading books important in our lives? It’s being few years that I’ve started my journey of being a Bibliophile. My love for books has grown over time. The more books I read, my point of view changes towards things. I started looking at both sides of the coins. Every situation that we go through has different views or prospect to…

Hey! Its been a busy few weeks but we managed to play test our game, Entropic Collapse, with a few peers!

We set up a time to play test with 3 unbiased students at QUT and recorded their results in google forms. The data revealed that players generally had a very positive experience. Most found the game fun to play (average enjoyment score: 4.67/5) and praised the main character design and controls. The difficulty level was seen as moderately challenging (3.0/5), with some frustration reported, mostly due to enemy spawn behavior—particularly bomb enemies spawning too close or unfairly on top of players or asteroids. The Shield Enemy was consistently identified as the most challenging opponent. Despite the challenge, players with varying gaming backgrounds all seemed to grasp the gameplay quickly and enjoy it, indicating strong accessibility and design clarity. Overall, the game resonates well with experienced players and has a solid foundation, with only minor tweaks needed for enemy behavior and fairness.

It was noted that players would like a tutorial screen at the beginning as they couldn't figure out what to do in the beginning. This will be added next week.

In other news, I have recently finished reading chapter 11 of Game Design Workshop, fourth edition. A standout idea is the concept of "living out fantasies" through gameplay. Fullerton points out that great games let players explore identities or experiences they might never have in real life, like being a space pilot, a rogue hacker, or even a villain. Games like GTA V thrive on this. It’s a reminder that games are a safe space to explore “what if?” questions, fantasies, fears, and alternate lives. It stuck with me as something to think about for the future in my game design journey.

> “who wrote this observation on a passage of the vampire armand that was screenshotted to my photos”

This week i worked on my asteroids game in GDevelop.

To recap, my game's concept is a take on the popular asteroids game but with some significant changes including:

Collect coins on things you destroy

Upgrade your gun / player

Place objects to destroy more things

The asteroids changed to mobs / zombies

I have made some development on this so far, even play testing with 2 people at the end of this development week.

As you can see, I have basic temporary artwork and UI that functions. The only current upgrades are bullet cooldown and player speed. I got 2 people to play test and the feedback is summarized as follows:

Gameplay:

Controls were intuitive (4/5).

Gameplay was enjoyable (4/5), but too easy (1/5 difficulty). Players could easily remain stationary and win.

Upgrade System:

Moderately rewarding (3/5). Upgrades weren't impactful and felt slightly distracting. Suggests adding shortcuts.

Clear explanations but could use more specificity (4/5).

Visuals and UI:

Visual style moderately matched gameplay (3/5); background inconsistent across devices.

Excellent clarity in UI (5/5), especially health, money, and upgrades.

General Feedback:

Liked the movement and turning mechanics most.

Suggested adding more enemy variety, boss fights with health bars, and special item drops.

Noted bugs: game doesn't end on player death; map lacks boundaries.

Enjoyable but room for improvement.

I will improve on all this feedback before finalizing the game.

Book Reading

This week I read chapter 10 of the Game Design Workshop book and have found an interesting mechanic i'd like to discuss, called Upkeep. This is found in the game Warcraft III. Basically, the more units you had, the less gold you earned. It was Blizzard’s way of stopping players from just maxing out their army and sitting on a pile of resources.

They wanted smaller, more tactical fights where your hero actually felt important—not just another unit in a giant blob. Upkeep forced players to make decisions: do I go all-in with a big army and risk going broke, or keep it lean and rich?

Funny part is they originally called it “Tax” and players hated it. Just changing the name to “Upkeep” made it easier to swallow. Small detail, but it shows how wording alone can shift how people feel about a mechanic.