I have been working (for what seems to be an eternity) on adding more perks to the game. It’s a feature strategy you could say. On one hand, perks are great to help the player get through the game more easily and more enjoyably in most cases…

But on the other hand, curious players will keep coming back to “catch them all” . Actually unlock them all.

The only challenge is that coming up with perks hasn’t been all that easy.

3 main reasons in my case:
a) Creative blocks - Sometimes I just don’t posses the wild imagination most of my teachers claimed to have. Thinking of different gains for the player isn’t that easy past a certain number. I am aiming for 48.

b) Game design - At least that’s what I think it is. Anyway.. this is me saying that I created the game in certain way. The enemies, player, weapons and other game objects work in a specific way and most have certain attributes. For example, the player has health, movement speed… etc.

Making perks that affect such attributes is somewhat simple if you intially thought about making adjustments down the line anyway. For example, I knew I would need to manipulate player speed and hp so the perks that boost these were easy to implement.

But when I get to more complicated things like the “titan mode” perk (which I introduced in the latest demo), things weren’t as easy (or enjoyable to be honest).

Why?

Well, titan mode is when the player temporarily gets a buff. damage is increased and so are the size of the projectiles that the player fires.

I have to check whether titan mode is on/off during the initializing of every projectile type.

48 projectile types.

48.

Wahhh hooooo.

Not to mention that I also have other perks that affect projectiles. And that’s just talking about the player.

What about the enemies and bosses, you ask?

Let’s not get into that right now.

But yeah.

Moral of the story… Start with a design doc.

What is a design doc to me?

A better organization of the ideas you want to implement that also includes opportunities for expanding or adding new ideas without the need to update the core game.

Numerous times I came close to screwing up the entire game just because I wanted to add something. This isn’t cool.

I’m new to this “making-games-beyond-game-jams-and-weekend-projects” thing, but it I should have atleast thought about the ton stuff i incorporated now … at the begining.

Demo 1 is different from Demo 2 because the game took a different direction. However, it lacks of those ideas that are meant to represent the final game.

And because of that, I’m going to publish a Demo 3 when I’m almost done with what I’m working on now and I have properly balanced the game.

And no I am not talking about enemies. Making them an intentional pain-in-the-ass experience was the plan all along Muhahahhahahahah.

But seriously, I wont.

Anyway, thought I would briefly share this really short message with why I think game design docs are good.

When I think of the 3rd reason, I will get back to you :)

#endOfChapter1