Game Studio III: Dev Blog #2

While it was relatively smooth sailing when I started working on Mapstermind, I quickly ran into some new issues, mainly that after creating all of the systems, I didn’t have much to do. The build wasn’t ready for QA yet, so all of the balancing that I had to do had to be based off of intuition.

Over a few weeks, I tried a couple methods to try to find inspiration. The first thing I tried was coming up with extra trap ideas that could either replace current traps (before they’re implemented) or be added to them. Among these ideas were a full bucket of chum, an empty bucket of chum, and naval mines. The full bucket of chum will attract the shark to it, giving it a bit more range outside of its regular patrol. The empty bucket of chum does not attract the shark, but the Piecelings cannot tell that it is empty. The naval mines are released randomly around the map upon pressing a button and stun Piecelings that run into them. These aren’t mobile in any way like other traps, but the quantity and randomness forces Piecelings to path carefully. These traps are currently planned to replace some other concepts that I had come up with.

The second method I tried was researching actual sea creatures to think of changes that would make the traps more interesting and fun. I didn’t want to make the puffer fish trap act like a real puffer fish just for the sake of realism, I wanted it to add depth to the gameplay first and be realistic second. Mainly, I found things that made me want to change the shark. First, I found that shark actually don’t “sleep”, but rather go into a state of rest where they move very slowly and aren’t as aware of their surroundings. I haven’t decided whether I want to implement this yet, but it could change how players interact with the shark if it keeps moving while it sleeps. Second, I found that sharks don’t always swim in straight lines and instead will often zig zag. I implemented this into the shark’s path to reward players for studying its patterns. If they know the shark’s patterns, they can find gaps in the path instead of always running away when the shark approaches.

Now that the build is ready for QA, I should have an easier time balancing the traps, attacks, and tasks, as I’ll have more feedback from people who have played with them, but I still think that those few weeks without feedback were very important for the development of my creative process. There are a few things that I might want to try again in the future (and a few that I won’t), but overall it was an experience that I enjoyed and certainly didn’t expect to get so much out of.