Intro

Happy New Year Everyone! 0/

I hope you had a solid start of year because for me It was a rough start because 4 days ago a burglar entered to my house but when he saw that the house wasn’t empty he ran away… I had to invest in some security measures to avoid this on the future. But enough from me and into the game!

The Toys

Since the first time I deliver the build for the Jam I thought that Human Piñata look like a visual novel and when I posted the game on Greenlight a lot of people told me that the game resembles Corpse Party a visual novel alike game which by no means is something bad, because everybody loved the story BUT I want to give Human Pinata its own game mechanic, so for months I struggled searching for that unique game mechanic until as I told you in previous devlogs I started reading “The Art of Game Design” and it is when I saw the light.

It’s true, Human Pinata didn’t have an exiting game mechanic because it didn’t have a toy. Once you put yourself in the perspective of looking for a toy to create a game around it, it’s easier to find the game mechanic. I ended up with 2 toys that I think fits great to the game.

Toy No.1

The first one you already know it: the procedural generation system. This toy is more like a need for me because I can’t afford paying for the assets I would need to make fixed scenes. Also I find fun that even if you will be playing the same game with the same goal the layout of the pinata workshop and the placement of items will be different… also… I can add more surprise stuffs… like… weeeeelll moving on that’s a talk for another day.

Toy No.2

Ok, you may question yourself… the game has the word piñata on its name but… where are the piñatas? is the antagonist? is the player? well, in the jam build they were the surprise at the end but I have changed a lot of stuffs in the game to improve it so I decided to give them a more important role in the game and made them the second toy.

I haven’t finished the mechanic yet but it have passed 15 days since the last post so here is a sneak peak:

As you can see there are a few elements that you haven’t seen before like:

• There’s a sanity meter (will talk about it in upcoming updates)

• Turns: Have you ever broke a pinata? you know that you don’t have unlimited hits right?

• Accuracy: This is very important specially if you are now a big boy or girl, it will be unfair that you hit with full force.

• Hit Force

• HP

The ragged doll still needs adjustments on the physics because as I said before, I’m creating a horror game, no a joke game using ragged dolls so I know (Because I play games too :P) that this can be exploit so I’ll adjust things to prevent the piñatas behaving in a funny way because…. well what the piñatas are will be revealed when I start working with the artist.

As you can see when the HP of a piñata part reaches 0 or below it detach, this is what happens with real piñata but you will only be able to detach 2-3 parts for every pinata.

Ending the Devlog for today

But what’s the purpose of adding this game mechanic? how this add value to the game? why doing this? don’t they look like normal piñatas? What’s the point? well it isn’t obvious because as I said I haven’t finished the mechanic so please stay tuned for the following days to show you the rest of the mechanic that will answer (Intentionally) some of the questions above.

As always thanks for following the game’s Devlog it means the world to me <3

Until Next Time!