If you have been following me on Twitter you’ll know I’ve been working on some prototyping this week.
With Gunslugs 2 just waiting for some final 2-player mode bug fixes, and a port to ChromeOS, I figured I earned a little break from that project.
The prototyping stage of game development is probably the most fun, it’s where you just throw various ideas around, dive into the code to create new and interesting worlds, and radically change the gameplay every hour !
To be honest, I had this prototype already in different shapes and forms waiting for some more time and attention. It basically started as a little jetpack dude flying around outer-world caves, trying to survive and get to the end of the cave.
This week it seen a slow evolving from that idea towards a more “metroid” type exploration game. The Jetpack has taken a back seat (could be in the game as a great upgrade) and you now roam the caves running and jumping, very much like in metroid!
The coolest stuff is that the cave is completely procedurally generated, and I obviously love developing those things (see a bunch of my previous games).
Right now I’m still searching for the right direction of the gameplay, which is the hardest part in prototyping (and game development). Should the player run+jump? what should the main goal be? what are the various little obstacles and goals you have on your path? .. it’s mostly a lot of trying various things, not being afraid of writing code which will be completely deleted and unused in the final game.
So as a little #FeedbackFriday how about you go and play around in the current prototype (you can’t die, you can’t win, it’s full of bugs, but it’s a rough idea) and let me know what you think in the comments or on twitter?
Minizoid (sorry, Android only for now)
– press “pause” to generate a new cave and start at beginning
