The Common Pickup

The development of Aimless has had a few interesting turns!

We've had a lot of discussions the past week or two and many ideas have come into play.  First and foremost at the top of our list of things to do is to squash some of the larger bugs our game had at the last testing period.  After that, though, we'll be working on concepts that should move the game forward in new and interesting ways.  Energy pickups is one of the ideas I presented.

Energy Pickups: Resource management is scheduled for implementation and it's taking the form of energy.  It has a number of values to us as designers such as way markers that show the player progress (in the form of charging points), variable challenge that can come from making charging points further away, and critical decision making.

Something that our game was lacking, however, was a low cost pickup.  You can see these in quite a few platforming games, such as the coins in Mario or the rings in Sonic.  They serve a few purposes, such as guiding the player's attention or creating challenges for the player to opt into.  With the addition of energy pickups we have a tool that can help with balance, challenge, and motivation!

Finding the Fun

Our small public testing event on October 19th went very well!  It was great to see so many people interested in our game and giving it as much time as they did!  The feedback that we got was very interesting.  From people's responses we can see that there is a strong fun factor in experimenting with Drone Abilities.  A lot of people also mentioned they enjoyed the mixing of abilities, which is something that we were aiming for.
The testing event also helped us to nail down some of our production methodology.  We'll be doing a lot more testing of level concepts before having the artists create assets for the levels.  Before the next testing event, we hope to be rid all of the bugs that were in this version.  The programmers will have to wear many hats as they'll be designing levels, creating mechanics, and removing bugs.

Efficiency and Democracy

As the software lead, I have the responsibility to concern myself over major choices in both how we design and our methods of development.  When a choice arises that has many differences it results in a swathe of positives and negatives that need to be weighed.  I must be both informed and democratic to ensure that both the decision is sound and that the members of my team are comfortable with the choice.  At times there will be a point when a team member is not in agreement, as is to be expected in any effort.  At such time I must walk the fine line between democracy and efficiency.  While the opinion may be valid and may even be the better choice, in some situations it is less efficient to keep that discussion going while other discussions are being put on hold.  Even more so when a change would require an overhaul.

This seems to be a skill that requires experience.  I expect that I'll become more comfortable with these kinds of decisions as I gain experience with them.