Week 4: One or the Other

        This week has mostly been preparation for our upcoming Milestone 1 presentation. All our deliverables and paperwork came together, but for a while we were stuck on the toughest part: deciding which prototype to move forward with into the rest of the semester. We had a lot of group meetings, a lot of discussion both with each other and our teachers, and a lot of testing. In the end we decided on our platforming combat game (the fighter/deckbuilder from previous weeks), and it's a decision I'm more or less comfortable with. I'm confident in being able to execute it well over the rest of the semester and (hopefully) the rest of the year, but it is a little disappointing. It's not a bad idea at all, but it is a safe one, which was a more important consideration for other members of my group. Personally I always skew towards the more innovative and out-there concepts, and it's a mixed blessing. You have the chance to strike something really big when you're living on the edge, but there are plenty of risks. I might have been willing to throw my semester on this project behind something risky and experimental, but not everyone was on board with that. I felt like keeping the team confident and united was more important than pursuing the other idea, so I backed down on it.
        The platforming combat game has plenty of room to work in, and I've planned a number of directions to iterate in and test over the next few weeks. I've been really enjoying the concepts our artist Liznel has been working on, and I'm excited to try to span the gap between the mechanics and the flavor on the game. I think this game will require a strong cohesion between story and mechanics in order to really excite players on the more casual side of things, who might be less interested in strategic drafting and more in beating up their friends and having fun. The biggest mechanical challenge that I'm expecting on the platforming combat game will be preventing the drafting system from feeling tacked on or gimmicky to the gameplay. Right now the clear-cut drafting phase followed by the combat feels very "game-y" and I think there's a way to make it fit more cohesively. We've talked about breaking the drafting up into stages during the match itself, sort of like a half-time bonus round, as well as an upgrade system for moves already drafted. Maybe further testing will show that players don't mind the explicit drafting stage, but we won't be able to get much data on that until we have a larger pool of moves.

Presentations await, see you in the second stage.