
Hi! I'm midway through developing my third commercial game, Witcheye, and I'm going to share a few thoughts on it here.
This game was meant to be a kind of stopgap step forward between developing Satellina (my first game, explicitly conceived as the simplest concept I thought I could squeeze some real gameplay out of and actually finish and get released) and a more ambitious mobile-game concept I was chewing over.
Well, as you might've predicted, this stopgap project took on a life of its own, and has turned into a massive endeavor itself--so much so that I ended up inserting another stopgap game, Satellina Zero, within the development of my supposed stopgap game. (Satellina Zero I actually did manage to squeeze out in six months or so, so maybe I'm getting better at estimating these things.) (Probably not.)
At its core, Witcheye DID have a simple concept: basically, what if you were playing Breakout, but could control the ball directly? All you need to do is swipe in the direction you want to go! This appealed to me because you could only really do it on a touchscreen; I could make a big, colorful, old-school adventure without relying on the clunky virtual controls you see in a lot of mobile games. When I'm making a mobile game, I want to use the actual innate qualities of the device, instead of trying to cram a different control paradigm onto an object that isn't really built for it.
Once I had that in mind, I saw two directions I could take it. One was a kind of score-attack game, where you try to control your swipes and rebounds to clear the screen of bricks or something like them, with various complications and bonuses and risks. The other was, well, a big old-school adventure, with a bunch of colorful worlds to explore and enemies to fight. In other words, it basically came down to a split between focusing on mechanics, and focusing on content.
Perhaps you will detect a certain wistfulness in my tone as I tell you that I decided to focus on content. Ultimately, what I love about games tends to be exploring a space, seeing neat stuff, overcoming tough challenges, so those are the things I chose to pursue. But the more mechanical approach intrigues me too--and might have been less work!--so if this one doesn't kill me, maybe that'll be the next one!
So, a cautionary tale: if you're a solo developer, trying to make a game where the appeal is that it's bursting with content is maybe not the best idea. But I can't exactly say I regret it. While I've got a long way to go here, it still brings me a lot of pleasure to make a new enemy or background or secret. I hope it'll be as fun for you to discover them as it was for me to come up with them.
Thanks for reading--more to come!
This game was meant to be a kind of stopgap step forward between developing Satellina (my first game, explicitly conceived as the simplest concept I thought I could squeeze some real gameplay out of and actually finish and get released) and a more ambitious mobile-game concept I was chewing over.
Well, as you might've predicted, this stopgap project took on a life of its own, and has turned into a massive endeavor itself--so much so that I ended up inserting another stopgap game, Satellina Zero, within the development of my supposed stopgap game. (Satellina Zero I actually did manage to squeeze out in six months or so, so maybe I'm getting better at estimating these things.) (Probably not.)
At its core, Witcheye DID have a simple concept: basically, what if you were playing Breakout, but could control the ball directly? All you need to do is swipe in the direction you want to go! This appealed to me because you could only really do it on a touchscreen; I could make a big, colorful, old-school adventure without relying on the clunky virtual controls you see in a lot of mobile games. When I'm making a mobile game, I want to use the actual innate qualities of the device, instead of trying to cram a different control paradigm onto an object that isn't really built for it.
Once I had that in mind, I saw two directions I could take it. One was a kind of score-attack game, where you try to control your swipes and rebounds to clear the screen of bricks or something like them, with various complications and bonuses and risks. The other was, well, a big old-school adventure, with a bunch of colorful worlds to explore and enemies to fight. In other words, it basically came down to a split between focusing on mechanics, and focusing on content.
Perhaps you will detect a certain wistfulness in my tone as I tell you that I decided to focus on content. Ultimately, what I love about games tends to be exploring a space, seeing neat stuff, overcoming tough challenges, so those are the things I chose to pursue. But the more mechanical approach intrigues me too--and might have been less work!--so if this one doesn't kill me, maybe that'll be the next one!
So, a cautionary tale: if you're a solo developer, trying to make a game where the appeal is that it's bursting with content is maybe not the best idea. But I can't exactly say I regret it. While I've got a long way to go here, it still brings me a lot of pleasure to make a new enemy or background or secret. I hope it'll be as fun for you to discover them as it was for me to come up with them.
Thanks for reading--more to come!