mojo091

For the past few months I have been developing one of the many game ideas that have been floating around in my head, waiting until I had time to bring them to life. The idea I chose to go forward with developing is based on a game I tried to develop for android 4 or 5 years ago, back then I didn't have the programming ability to execute the idea well enough to meet my own standards. So since then the game concept has been marinating in the back of my mind, maturing and improving and refining over the years, until a few months ago when, in a pretty severe bout of what I thought was depression at the time, I decided I needed to make time to work on a serious game project and create something that I'm passionate about and can be proud of. Turns out, I wasn't really depressed in the clinical way back then, my life just genuinely sucked a LOT in every way, and my brain was reacting normally to my circumstances. I felt much better once I started getting into the development of the game, I still had almost no money, no friends or contact with any family members that weren't psychotic, psychopathic, or drug addicted, and nothing that I enjoyed doing besides working on my game. But I was totally okay with that, that's how I like it actually. I do 'like' people, but I do NOT like spending time with them, any instinctual drive to have relationships with my parents and other family members died a while back, being broke still kinda sucked, but as long as I could afford to eat and sleep in-doors and have access to somewhere with wifi so I can work on my game I'm good. All I need is something to obsess over and be passionate about, and the means to do just that.

So over the next few months I worked on my game, feeling better than I was but still having bouts of pretty severe unhapiness and frustration and anxiety, but I always knew they would end and after the down there would be an up - where I'd be energetic and optimistic and motivated, and I'd be very productive with developing my game. I didn't have as much free time as I would've liked, but the gaps between my work sessions were short enough that my passion and motivation would persist during them.

Here's a very early video of my prototype, before I even knew what direction the gameplay was going in. It has since shifted quite a bit, but it's interesting to see how much it keeps changing. I did actually have a lot of fun playing this test-level though, this video is me speedrunning it:

speedrun of early meatboy-like prototype level

Before long, I created a very ugly but very capable and featured level editor for my game, along with a handful of 'test levels,' which were basically just levels I made with quick-and-crappy art and no real start or end, just to test out the different features of my game and to try all the different obstacle/puzzle ideas I came up with and make sure they were engaging, challenging, fun, and numerous enough to make a complete, quality game with. It didn't take long to get all the main features working right, and I was convinced before I was even done that I'd have plenty of interesting and fun ideas of various difficulty levels to fill a full game with consistently engaging and entertaining gameplay.

At that point I went through a phase of real happiness and excitement - feelings I haven't felt in at least 5 or 6 years. I rode this natural high for a while, and though I didn't get a lot of tangible work done during it, I spent a lot of time thinking, playing around with my game and editor trying out weird ideas, looking at tons of other games for ideas and inspiration, and thinking some more. I came up with a vague and general but cohesive vision for a full game. All I had before was some core mechanics and some fun gameplay features/ideas, they would be the heart of my game and I was confident in their quality, but my game could still come out pretty crappy if I didn't execute it well, or it could be amazing if I did. I gained a lot of insights that I could directly apply to my development process during this time, mostly I learned that a fun concept or even fun gameplay isn't enough to make a truly excellent game, even great gameplay gets boring after a while if there is nothing else to it. I decided to examine my strengths and figure out what else I could offer, as a one-man development team, that'd keep people playing and enjoying my game enough to come back or even show it to their friends.

Art was NOT one of my strengths, neither was music/sound, but despite not doing any real writing in a long time, I was always a good writer and could think up decent stories and execute them very well. I got the idea that I wanted an awesome story that was told in a way that added to - rather than took away from - the gameplay. I also wanted the story to unfold in such away that it would intrigue the players early on, and keep them intrigued throughout the game by utilizing many different arcs that lined up well and overlapped a bit, so that players would never experience a long period of playing in which there wasn't some aspect of the story teasing their brain and making them want to find out what's coming next. Pulling something like that off would obviously be great for a game, but their are two challenges that make it kinda difficult; if there weren't then everybody would make their stories that way. First off, as a story progresses and arcs begin and end and begin again, the player gets used to the feeling of mystery/suspense/drama/etc, the thing that keeps them feeling this way and wanting more is the expectation that some kind of resolution or closure will be provided at the end of these little mini-arcs. If you have a ton of them, then it should be great, because the players constantly have at least one thing taunting them to keep turning to the next page, and the frequently experience the payoffs that come at the end which are usually the most rewarding parts of a story, right? But in reality, having too many build-ups and too many payoffs just numbs their emotional reaction to them as they get used to it, this is why movies aren't usually longer than a couple hours. To pull it off well you need a balance, you can't have too many, but the better/more intriguing your arcs are and the more impactful the payoffs, the more you can have before they fall below that threshold of being uninteresting or boring. Also, the bigger and more exciting arcs raise the players standards/expectations even faster, so while it might not be a good idea to intentionally make all the early story arcs kinda crappy, ordering and spacing out the big and awesome arcs can help a lot with maintaining a level of interest throughout the game.

The other 'challenge' I mentioned that makes it hard to tell great stories in games that are consistently interesting, is the actual storytelling method. Unless you want to sacrifice gameplay or annoy players who are more focused on the non-story elements of your game, you need to find a natural and interesting way to actually tell the story that doesn't interrupt/block gameplay too much but also doesn't hinder your ability to tell the story and get the players engaged in it; it's another balancing act.

I'm at the point now where I have the very general points of my story figured out, a few of the main characters and their traits planned, and I think I'm onto a pretty good idea for how to tell the story within the game. Basically I have to flesh out all the details now, figuring out scene for scene, level by level, what is going to happen in the story and how I'm going to tell it. This process lead me to a 3rd challenge, that is somewhat unique to my situation, that is making things even harder. The storytelling method I plan on using(and pretty much every other method I could think of) requires the graphics to support it, when an event happens in a certain location, I need a whole set of graphics for that location, as well as graphics for the specific items/characters involved in that scene. As I mentioned earlier, art is NOT my strong suit. I can SOMETIMES make some kinda good 2d art if I put in a TON of effort and literally make DOZENS of attempts before one of my attempts produces decent results. It's extremely time consuming, not guaranteed to work, and as a one-man team that is not optimal. My other options are to hire a good artist(not happening, I'm so broke I don't even have a cell phone or health insurance or a car), or find an artist that's willing to team up with me in exchange for a cut of any profits(unlikely I'll find a decent artist who is willing to bet on my project, although I am looking anyway just in case I get lucky - that would be amazing and we'd be able to make a great game). So it looks like unfortunately I'm going to have to go with the time consuming and difficult method if I really want to create the game I've envisioned and do it justice, which I do because half-assing this project and making a game that I know isn't as good as it could've been isn't an option for me.

So that's where I'm at now, I've made like 2 and a half attempts at making graphics for the first couple scenes/levels of my game, and as expected they both turned pretty 'meh.' That's okay though, I knew it was going to take many more tries than that, and with each attempt my art skills improve that much more. I could post my attempts here, but I think it'd be pointless because they are completely irrelevant and different to what the game will actually look like. I can share this little clip reel I made of one of my test levels though, it's old but it shows off some of the main mechanics of my game being used to make very basic obstacles. I'm hesitant to share anything here yet, as I know that every aspect of the game is going to improve so much, but this is a development blog, so I guess I'll post it. And if anyone has any comments/questions/suggestions/criticisms please message me!(just remember this is an old video of my prototype, pretty much ALL of the polish is missing and the obstacles are the most basic uses of my core features).

Anyone who actually read all that crap, please consider following me on twitter if you aren't tired of hearing about my game yet!

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