So game development am I right?

 

through out this year I’m going to be creating a video game, and this, along with video dev logs I plan on making, will catalogue my experience, trials, triumphs, and insane ramblings about game design.

 

17-01-23

this is made after the fact, so I’m mostly going off of memory, but I remember a good amount of details.

for the career discovery project, we needed to make something related to the career we want to go into in the future. As somebody who wants to peruse a career in game deign, the project was a no brainer. I was going to make a video game, and more specifically, I was going to make an idle game.

An idle game is a genre of video game in which the main concept is that the player can leave the game running in the background, and still make progress. I’ll give an example.

 

 

The hook of the genre is exponential growth, and achievements. There are flaws however, many have criticized the genre for the following reasons.

• Extremely addictive and time consuming
• No real goal
• The general premise being “make number bigger”
• Not engaging
• Plus many more

I hope to fix these problems with my own game, but first I’ll need a idle game skeleton to work with.

The engine in question I’m using is idle game maker, which is a pretty simple system to work with, and is designed to make idle games. the issues with idle game maker soon showed themselves. first it’s a pretty niche engine, meaning there aren’t many tutorials on how to use it. thankfully the creators made an example game in the code, so I could reference that If I didn’t know what to do. The other issue was that despite the creators saying that it’s flexible enough to do anything, without tutorials I can’t figure out how to do that.so essentially I just made the epitome of all the above issues.

if you want to see the game made it can be played by clicking here.

To quote Megamind from the hit film “Megamind” (2010) “Clearly it was time to move on”. Idle game maker has served it’s purpose but I needed an engine with a little more power. Enter Unity. Unity is an engine that can be used to create pretty much any game you want. The programing language is much more complex than idle game maker though, and I’m still not very good with it yet. I will release another dev log after some good progress is made.

 

25-05-23

so it’s been a few months since my last update on here, and some very good progress has been made on the game.

I would first like to link to my Itch.io page for the game. here you will be able to download the game, as well as check the dev logs for a more in depth look at the development for the game. You can reach it by clicking here.

this will be a more broad look at the development of the game.

So first, what has been made of the game so far?  almost all of the basic mechanics of an idle game has been implemented at this point, with a few vital exceptions, the only major things that are missing are achievements, and saving. these hopefully wont take to long to implement, however I have noticed a new problem with my game.

So, here’s the issue with most idle games, they are very similar. They have the same basic formula of click to make number go up. What make one idle game better than the other is what mechanics it introduces to set it’s self apart. there needs to be an extra layer of complexity or strategy in order to keep players engaged. Currently my game has no such mechanics, but I do have an idea.

I would like to introduce a concept I call the hero system. once a hero is purchased it will sit in a separate menu, and can be attached to one building at a time. this will do a verity of affects from straight up increasing production, to introducing new mechanics, on top of that, since the hero’s are characters, that means a story can be implemented which is great because having a story can keep engagement, and I love writing lore, so that excites me a lot.

some other things that have happened during the process of making this game. first is that I have been getting a lot of feedback from classmates who have downloaded the game, this isn’t to helpful as of now, but definitely will be down the line. I have also been getting a ton of help from a classmate with learning how to use unity (I had no clue before he started helping me out).

moving forwards, my main goals are going to be to get the hero system in place as well as getting things nice and ready for the upcoming STEAM fair.

 

21-06-23

the following is a copy paste from my itch.io dev log:

STEAM FAIR

the steam fair has happened, and it was a lot of fun. Everyone’s projects were great, and I’m looking forwards to next years. I also got some time to demo my game, and get some feedback from the general public.

TO WORK ON

– Visual overhaul: The visuals of the game were fine up to this point, since it was just a demo. But moving forwards I should work on having more interesting stuff to look at.

– More hero’s: I think the hero concept was lost on a lot of the people demoing the game, since there is only one. I want a fairly in depth system that requires a good deal of micro-management in order to optimize production.

– Upgrade rework: The upgrade system needs a serious update, since as it currently is, there is no incentive to buy older buildings. Which means that it might be time to part ways with the floor boards, at last for a bit.

– Story: Adding a story will help drive up player engagement. Also, I really like needlessly complex lore, and I really want and excuse to add one.

Can’t wait to see what this game becomes over the next year!

 

over the year, I have learned how to use unity and made a basic game that I could easily expand upon. I look forward to next years STEAM fair, and to seeing what my game becomes by that point.