The actual plot benefits from being as simple as it is - players shouldn’t have any issue figuring out where to go, interesting lore bits come from environment and characters
All characters from memory
- Universal E
- Captain
- various crew
- Iron Fist
- Sapient horde guy
- Lighthouse golem
- Previous host
- Last wizard
- Nature spirit
- Clay spirit
- Sea devil
- Crabman
- Rock people
- 5 wizards
What would a schedule look like for dev work?
- An hour or two each day
- Current Time sink would be getting all remaining mechanics working and polished ideally
- Most time would be spent mocking up levels
- testing should be a big part of this process but probably won’t be
Earliest possible release: 2-2.5 years (accounting for extra dev time)
- 28 months
- 6 months: Refine mechanics and fill out matrix. Create a couple test levels along the way to make sure everything works and is clear to testers
- 4 months: Refine enemies
- 3 months: Bosses?
- 8 months: World whitebox layout and basic game structure
- 7 months: Art passes and polish?
Ways to approach bosses
- Most likely option: BFBB style, hit them a few times and win
- Should I even waste time with them?
- Seem to run counter to gameplay of whole game. Big bullet sponge bosses should be avoided in general. Most fights should be more like big puzzles - threat of a boss should be there but damaging him is kind of trivial?
- Bosses that SHOULD happen: iron fist, horde crowd, captain brief fight, end
- most of these are platforming heavy with the enemy only attacking you indirectly - this approach seems to be the way to go
- How could other fights take this approach?
- Treat these boss fights more like long platforming encounters than anything else
Potential testing format
- hardtack labs
- A bunch of level segments that can be shipped out to testers
- From menu can view list of all segments along with date added
- May be able to use addressables system to easily push new levels out
- one-time use keys for play test? Is that even necessary?
- From title menu players can test all levels in order, test all levels randomly, or select from big list
- After beating a level: Player is given a quick form to fill out containing 1-5 star rating, 1-5 star difficulty, email slot
- If each copy is linked to a single key, we could use this to associate it with a certain email at startup
- Players could go back thru and be able to attach YouTube links to their past reviews
Ideas
- Add a break in the arch by muscle beach: Clay spirit walked thru it when it tried to invade, can see this happen in the lab footage