Asterism

Full Moon
Dev Blog #07

9 October 2022

The beginnings of a demo

At the moment I'm preparing for a small playtest with around 10 people in order to get feedback on the game as a whole so far. So over the last month I've been working on areas like the intro level which tutorialises the mechanics and provides context for the rest of the game. But, I want to keep some of that a secret for now :)

So what I've decided to write about this time is a collaboration that I've just begun with my partner, James, who will be supporting me with some of the design and code, particularly around motion and interaction mechanics. What we're aiming to do is create a good structure for the player interactions that has consistency across the game, but is flexible enough for me to tweak in each scene to give a nice range of movement and feedback for the player. Over the last few weeks I've been prototyping a lot of different mechanics, so it's a really good opportunity now to pull it all together into something more cohesive.

After the upcoming playtest I'm going to be switching gears from experimenting with ideas for the whole game, and will be focusing on creating a more polished version of 2-3 levels. This will probably include the intro plus 1-2 song levels, which will act as a demo that I can hopefully take to events, use for trailers etc. I'm pretty excited about this as I'll be able to spend time on areas like the art and refining the music, which are certainly in need of an update!

As a starting point, James and I took a deep dive into the first track that I plan to include in the demo, "Hemisphere". We went through the prototype playable version along with my Miro notes about the track, talking through each section and writing notes about a more detailed 'ideal' version of the level. We talked about what kinds of movement are actually happening, giving them descriptions like 'trudging slowly', 'skating', 'skiing' (perhaps a clue to the setting!). We also talked about the cinematography a little and how the scenes might transition into each other in a more dynamic way and how I'll be using the camera in the game.









Next, I'll be going through a process of organising these interaction verbs and comparing them to other levels in the game to see where they can be re-used, and how many other unique interactions I have planned currently. For example, the 'skating' in Hemisphere might actually function in the same way as 'flying' in another level. I also want to ensure that the player input is intuitive, given that there are so many scenes with their own mechanics, which will require me to group similar types of interactions together (e.g. 'something that involves looking up') and always using the same keyboard button to trigger that behaviour.

We're going to be working on this throughout the project, but using the prototype so far has been a great starting point for organising and refining the mechanics of the game. It's nice to be at a point in the project where I can begin filtering through all the ideas from the last few months and begin letting them settle into something more polished!





Previous Full Moon Dev Blog

Next Full Moon Dev Blog

Sign up to my newsletter to get updates about the project!