I have spent the last few hours tinkering trying to figure out a strategy that would let me have a more playable game without having to spend too much time. Could not think of anything. I then spent some time tweaking the existing game to see if I could find the fun. I couldn’t So I slapped a score on it, and made it restart the level when you die, and am going to “ship it”. I feel like there might be something there but I kind of hate it right now and don’t want to poke around anymore.

Can download here: http://code.google.com/p/mini-ld-28-unitformations/downloads/detail?name=salukminild28.zip&can=2&q=

You can toggle formations with 1 and 2, and press the arrow keys to change the direction. Formation 2 is kind of broken and useless, and the level is easy enough I think you can “win” without pressing a key, although you won’t get the best score. My best is 22, with only a few baddies missed. Not sure if it’s possible to hit every grunt but it might be.

What went wrong :

*idea too hard to pull off in 2 days, needed more upfront design

*Spent most of yesterday playing with formations and tweaking controls without level data. How do I even know if the controls are good or not without something to test against?

*Spent too much time tweaking at the end when a bit of extra polish could hide the bad gameplay

What went right:

*Got formation and base code up quickly first night

*Not much else

For next time:

*levels first controls second

*try to find easier idea

*limit tweak time for each feature so I have more time to see how well elements fit with each other

*dont make a scrolling shooter ever again, it never works out for me

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 31st, 2011 at 10:00 pm and is filed under MiniLD #28. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.