I designed a handful of new interactions for the game, unique to each region and resource node. These special upgrades will sit further in the upgrade trees and change the way the harvesting feels when unlocked. The goal is to really push the differentiation between regions so that each one can stand on its own, without having the player feel like they are repeating themselves. This is a core challenge to creating interesting content games on a smaller resource budget. There's two types of content that can go into the game. One is play content, and the other is mechanical content. Play content is, as suggested by the name, more theatrical, more in presentation and performance. Play content encompasses story, levels, and is presented to the player in a form that resembles storytelling. With play, the player has more things to do. Creating play content feels like a 1:1 endeavor. That is, every moment has to be handcrafted. That goes from creating the characters to writing the lines of dialogue, to sequencing out the level progression. Mechanical content is more about the designing of interesting, repeatable game interactions. Mechanics are akin to toys. With toys, a player can take time to feel, explore, discover. And to find joy in the toy's feedback. What else can the toy do? Does it act differently in a different context? Toys are the mechanics that take a players input and distills it into a clear output This distinction is important as the I think about continued work on Grindy Gacha. Because I need to strike a good balance between the two. If I lean too much on just Play Content, then the game will be heavily scripted, depend on the strength of the storytelling and plot beats and production value. For an indie project, pushing the production value is the hardest part! We often have to make tradeoffs here, opting for style and economy over high resolution polish. So, I'm looking to strike that balance by putting substantial work on the mechanical side of things. Making everything in the game toy-like so that even simple, repetitive gameplay can be fun (even if for a short while). At the end of the day I do want players to stay and play for more hours -- and have those be super enjoyable hours! My prototype was just a 20 minute experience for what felt like a helluva lot of work. So when I think that the full game has to be about 10x bigger it is daunting. Framing the development roadmap as Play vs Mechanics helps me understand what part of the process I'm in, and how far I am from a complete design. We are really just scratching the surface on it with the 5 basic resource nodes. They have a nice unique interaction pattern, and yes I can add more and more juice to make playing with it feel exciting and the rewards substantial. But there's still second tier, potentially third tier resources, and a host of other systems to create and hook up. I did talk about the other features in passing - heroes, gacha, quests, collections. My ambition for these is that they will feel like a natural extension of the game space. That they can stand on their own as fun toys, too. So the question on my mind today is, how do I make pulling gacha more toy-like? How do I do the same for a Hero roster, or for Questing? These features are fairly common in the classic RPG design, what can we do to make each one fun to interact with as a system?
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gamedevlog #011 - Incremental, Multiplicative, and Special Upgrades
I designed a handful of new interactions for the game, unique to each region and resource node. These special upgrades will sit further in the upgrade trees and change the way the harvesting feels when unlocked. The goal is to really push the differentiation between regions so that each one can stand on its own, without having the player feel like they are repeating themselves. This is a core challenge to creating interesting content games on a smaller resource budget. There's two types of content that can go into the game. One is play content, and the other is mechanical content. Play content is, as suggested by the name, more theatrical, more in presentation and performance. Play content encompasses story, levels, and is presented to the player in a form that resembles storytelling. With play, the player has more things to do. Creating play content feels like a 1:1 endeavor. That is, every moment has to be handcrafted. That goes from creating the characters to writing the lines of dialogue, to sequencing out the level progression. Mechanical content is more about the designing of interesting, repeatable game interactions. Mechanics are akin to toys. With toys, a player can take time to feel, explore, discover. And to find joy in the toy's feedback. What else can the toy do? Does it act differently in a different context? Toys are the mechanics that take a players input and distills it into a clear output This distinction is important as the I think about continued work on Grindy Gacha. Because I need to strike a good balance between the two. If I lean too much on just Play Content, then the game will be heavily scripted, depend on the strength of the storytelling and plot beats and production value. For an indie project, pushing the production value is the hardest part! We often have to make tradeoffs here, opting for style and economy over high resolution polish. So, I'm looking to strike that balance by putting substantial work on the mechanical side of things. Making everything in the game toy-like so that even simple, repetitive gameplay can be fun (even if for a short while). At the end of the day I do want players to stay and play for more hours -- and have those be super enjoyable hours! My prototype was just a 20 minute experience for what felt like a helluva lot of work. So when I think that the full game has to be about 10x bigger it is daunting. Framing the development roadmap as Play vs Mechanics helps me understand what part of the process I'm in, and how far I am from a complete design. We are really just scratching the surface on it with the 5 basic resource nodes. They have a nice unique interaction pattern, and yes I can add more and more juice to make playing with it feel exciting and the rewards substantial. But there's still second tier, potentially third tier resources, and a host of other systems to create and hook up. I did talk about the other features in passing - heroes, gacha, quests, collections. My ambition for these is that they will feel like a natural extension of the game space. That they can stand on their own as fun toys, too. So the question on my mind today is, how do I make pulling gacha more toy-like? How do I do the same for a Hero roster, or for Questing? These features are fairly common in the classic RPG design, what can we do to make each one fun to interact with as a system?
gamedevlog #010 - Resource Harvesting via Game, Board, Source nodes
End of the month update here, with progress made on the resource harvesting part of the game. I've gotten the preliminary UI layout setup and a couple of working sections (Wallet UI, Timer & Game Board sections). So the player can grind now! Each resource has a different 'playstyle' so to say. Instead of having every harvest by a click, I've designed 5 different resource harvesting mechanics, which makes each one feel different an unique. The stardust is harvested by simple click and hold, just like in the prototype. The resin is generated on a growth timer, like a waiting for a plant. The coolant is filled and processed automatically, it's a set and forget type. The sparks are gathered from charging the red shard, and each spark must be collected after it flies out. Lastly, the dots are created by clicking on the vertices of a shape to trace the symbol. I also have 2 basic upgrades working! They are the basic ones for Amount and Hold Time, which make harvesting faster. Each source has a list of parameters that can be manipulated, and these are all going to be used for the upgrades system. There is support for multiple resource types as an upgrade cost, so the progression will not be tied to one currency. More to come now that the system is set up, it is a matter of iterating on the design and hooking up the properties.
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