The next move 📄 posted at 21 November 2024 on new danboland

BRDA launch isn’t quite the clean break I had envisioned in my head. Got some more hotfixing and patching to do. But I am starting to think about what’s next.

There’s a long-term project I want to reach towards. There’s a story I have in my head – though a lot of it is connective tissue between what I think are cool setpieces, themes or moments, it’s also… something, and I would really quite like this thing in my head to exist.

However, I don’t think I can reach that far right now. I need to improve everything about my current skillset and approach, as well as re-establish myself as someone actively making video games and not someone who made one once.

Therefore, the next move is intended to be fun for me to work on, to play to my strengths and to allow me to further develop them. I’ve also noticed that there’s a fair glut of really cool looking indie/doujin STG either on the shelves or in the works right now, so I think I need to come up with something a bit different and go at it full-force.

Therefore, I’m thinking about:

• Boss rush format – many types of “boss”, gigantic behemoths, agile rival ships, squadrons, fortresses, turret walls
  • Gimmicks! Variety!
  • Explore behaviour mixing it up beyond “bullet pattern 1 -> bullet pattern 2 -> bullet pattern 3”
  • Difficulty spikes force strategy and create drama
  • Not a pure boss rush – some enemy waves and setpieces – always consider pacing and recovery
• A “broad” scoring system where you can pick up a lot of different bonuses, and a strategic element is in deciding what to go for
• Coupling of scoring to strategy to survival – score milestone upgrades? resource sacrifice/conversion? in-run upgrade shops?
  • Latter adds a lot of appeal and solves some problems, but it seems too easy an answer
  • Scoring vs rank vs resources
  • Rank management
• Embrace brokenness and the wildness of the frontier
  • Embrace some player options being good, some being bad – the mark of a master is to flourish in all circumstances
• Getting across a sense of personality and character with less means – if there are tons of bosses, they probably can’t all have character art, what could they have instead?
• A simple story oriented around a few visually appealing characters (cool spaceships/mecha do not sell games)
• Something the player can do between runs that’s not labbing, shopping or looking at lists of things
• Stages – Layered effects, short gimmicks, music syncs, vertigo moments, don’t fear abstraction, roughness or simplicity. Some basic sprites/primitives moving and acting in the right way beats an exquisite painterly prerendered “google earth” background png
• Game effects – less flickering and flashing, more crumbling, burning and tarnishing
• Game engine side – develop a hybrid-ECS style that lets me combine my conventional huge clockwork entities with simple “dumb” entities and behaviours
• More defensive programming, more and better automated testing/deployment
• User modding – possibly as a way to deliver/enable lots of niche technical features without having to directly support them
• This is a vague concept that I can’t put into words right now – but the feeling of a piece of software as a holistic personal expression, as a thing with its own interest and merit. Basically: more thought into how “the whole package” operates, from launching the executable to closing it

Things I want to avoid:

• Randomness – in boss order, options, general scenario. Instead, have a consistent challenge that forces pre-emptive strategy and practice instead of “improvisation”¹
• Mechanics and systems that reward hoarding resources (saving is not quite the same as hoarding)
• Metaprogression
• Labyrinthine “and now after throwing 14 runs for challenges, quests and unlock requirements we can finally start playing the actual game” gameplay unlock systems
• Automated analytics – there are good reasons to do this, but it’s a lot of work to do right and I don’t trust myself not to become a data-brained goblin about it
• Missions / extra stuff as “content” instead of playing around with mechanics, systems and gimmicks

Things I’m not sure about:

• Online global leaderboards
• Online replays
  • Both of these are technical features that have to be done well and create a lot of problems
  • As a player I don’t really use this stuff so it’s hard to get enthused about implementing/polishing it
  • Is there a “new angle” to come at this with? Tools to let communities maintain their own boards? Steam Game Recording?

I said a while ago that a goal for 2024 was to try to learn to do music “in-house”. That’s not going to happen. It’s too much of a rabbit hole, and I cannot actually do everything to the standard I want. If I do my actual job right, there are many talented musicians out there who will be very eager to supply the tunes.

Sounds really easy… ahhhh…