#game devving

In this week's lecture, we mostly went through more things on gdevelop, what caught my attention mostly was scope. Previously, I had stumped myself into a bad game as I wanted too much for my game and spent too long conceptualizing it rather than actually thinking about the player experience. I learnt especially from the playtesting period that its more important to get the fundamentals down for these short week periods of game making rather than perfect every detail and mulling over the idea and look of the game.

#Sunset, Tale of Tales and FailGames #indiegames #altgames #gamedev #ToT #PRISOM #elit

After reading the news that the experimental game studio Tale of Tales has sadly ceased game development after their latest game, Sunset, sold only 4,000 copies, I immediately reached out to one half of the ToT’s crew, Auriea Harvey. Auriea and her partner in all aspects, Michaël Samyn, have been creating work in the same online…

For the benefit of new followers, 'Scarlet Scandalous' and 'Victor Victorious' videogame projects and associated characters, worlds and narratives are legal intellectual property of the developer (that would be me). Not that I imagine there's anyone out there who's desperately eager to seize creative assets off a hobbyist game dev with no proven track record, but fuck it, it's worth mentioning.

As a lot of you know (but still don't care), I've been building a sequel to Victor Victorious, the game I release back in 2014. The big gimmick this time round is that you standard attack changes in accordance with your environment because you have the ability to channel ambient energy from the world around you. I'm currently developing the fourth level, so I thought it was time to give y'all a sneak peak at the what I'm going to dubiously term the 'elements' you can attack with- at least the one's I've come up with so far that relate to the four levels that currently exist.

Electricity: A pretty standard videogame "element", the electric attack lets you shock your enemies into submission with busts of lightning-like static. I'm particularly pleased with the animation for defeated enemies with this one, because you can see the static lines still crackling across their twitching, unconscious forms after they've been knocked out.

Gravity: A rather less well-used "element", the gravity attack is used to apply massive, singularity-level gravitational pressure to enemies, thus squashing them down to minute sizes. Conceptually fun, but a nightmare to decide sound-effects for.

Fireball: Back to the standard elemental suite offered by many videogames for this one. That said, does hitting enemies with a fireball and leaving them smoking on the ground ever get old? Experts say not.

Dazzle: The dazzle attack uses blinding light to leave enemies dazed and confused. It's one of the more fun little attacks in the game- unlike many of the game's other more devastating attacks, it only incapacitates rather than implying serious internal injuries. 

Speaking of enemies, however, one of the big challenges of the development process has been creating new ones. Victorious had a pretty well-rounded suite of enemies and obstacles: there were enemies that rushed you when you got close, enemies with short-range weapons,enemies with long range weapons and enemies with vertical instead of horizontal attacks. However, because the core gameplay in Scarlet Scandalous is so similar to that of its predecessor, it's still necessary to expand on the roster enough to maintain player interest. One new enemy type that's already been completed is an enemy that drops on you from above when you try to pass under it. Obviously, each instance of this enemy-type can only be used once, because once it's dropped, it's pretty much off the screen and no longer a threat. As such, another aerial enemy-type is currently under development that continually drops bombs from a high vantage point- I think I might have these weapons explode to create a wider area of danger whenever they the ground rather than allowing them to just disappear off the screen like the one-use drop enemy. Another idea for an enemy-type (in reality more of an obstacle) is for a sealed box covered in projectile weapons that fires in the four cardinal directions simultaneously before switching to fire at their diagonal equivalents, leaving the player only a brief moment to adjust their position to get out of the upcoming line of fire.

As a few of you know and a few less of you care, I've been building a videogame called Scarlet Scandalous for a while now- the sequel to my debut title Victor Victorious (which you can download for free HERE) and the second in the 'Protectoriat' series.

Today I was building the third playable level (which is an awesome level that marries ancient Grecian-inspired architecture with massive fuck-off volcanoes and the ability to set your enemies on fire), and based on what I did with this level, I've decided to start practicing what I'm going to start calling 'Landmark Design Philosophy' for the rest of the game.

It's not unusual for larger triple-A games to include particular structures or areas in the game-worlds made from unique assets (or designed to look unique using existing assets) to serve as landmarks for the player. In free-to-download linear platformers, there's always the time, budget or necessity to put effort into creating these structures. However, for Scarlet Scandalous, that's exactly what I intend to do. Because each level represents a world that exists in a vast, complex multiverse, I don't want any level in the game to feel generic: each level has to feel like a place that could have occurred organically. There has to be interesting things for the player to find as they go through the level. As such, in every new level built for Scarlet Scandalous, I intend to include one unique 'landmark' to tie the rest of the level together and create a sense of a specific, non-generic locale.

To a certain extent, this builds on the design philosophy already established in Victor Victorious. The basic principle of Victorious' design was that platforms and backgrounds should be unique to each level with no recycling of these aesthetic assets. Sure, you'd still be dodging enemies and leaping over spikes regardless of whether the ground under your feet was multi-coloured stone, glittering jewels or worryingly-unidentified organic matter, but ensuring that each level was made of different aesthetic components helped separate the worlds of the Multiverse and create a feeling of discovery. Scarlet Scandalous is just adding to that by ensuring that each level has at least one distinctive area within it designed to enhance the idea that the world is an organic place with different locales not just a carefully-arranged set of platforms laid out to challenge a player.

Excel Commander- the Adjutant, 2nd playable character.