7 ms·

From throwaway side project to Switch in 2 years: my indie gamedev story

255 points by pdrummond 4y ago

sirjonathan 4y ago
I loved this. Thank you for sharing! I’m betting others will get to those levels as well ;) P.S. Love seeing that you made the site with WordPress! It’s gorgeous!
pizzathyme 4y ago
I love side projects that achieve a level of great pride. Congrats
japhib 4y ago
Congrats on the release OP! For anyone reading, if you’re a programmer by training, I’d recommend literally any game engine other than Game Maker Studio for creating your game. Unity is a great choice for beginners that lets you program in C#. Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.
- rtpg 4y ago
  Unity suffers from being 3d by default (so you're kind of defaulted into "physics-activated 3d world" stuff), having very low discoverability of features, and a lot of googling to land on the Unity forums. If you're a programmer, there are a couple ways you can experience happiness: - Try one of the many "2d game library" things. They tend to be limited to playing sound, displaying gfx, and handling input. But if you're a programmer that will at least give you an idea of what is implemented and what isn't. - Use Unreal with Blueprints. "But I'm a programmer, let me write code!" Trust me, when you are using blueprints you both get a much more discoverable API, and can actually get all the fancy built-in 3d stuff to work. Also if you're not working on something by yourself, suddenly other people can help out a lot. - Use Game Maker Studio! Being a programmer means you might have some more systems thinking, but ultimately having stuff like tile editors easily means you're not going to spend a month building out your own little tools. Programming everything from scratch is overrated if you actually want to make something that works. But Unity has a lot of half-baked features and is actually pretty hard to get working nicely for so many things that it can easily end up being a massive source of incidental complexity.
  - lastangryman 4y ago
    Obligatory Godot shout out which unlike Unity had has "native" 2D support and is a pleasure to work in.
- Closi 4y ago
  The best choice is the one that you, personally, will complete and build a full game in. Presumably OP knew how to use gamemaker studio, and could either choose between: 1) Starting to build the game straight away in Game Maker Studio and 2) Learning C# / Unity and then starting to build your own engine and plug together tile editors and things which will then let you build the game. In the case above, Option 1 will probably have more success as you are starting to build the thing rather than defering building the thing.
  - johnnyanmac 4y ago
    Yup, Toby Fox more or less did this exact sort of research in 2020 while developing Deltarune, and came to similar conclusions: We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1. Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we've started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020. A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting). I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don't regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game's story and characters better. https://deltarune.com/update-092020/ https://deltarune.com/update-092020/ Obvious caveat: He already had development in the game on one engine so that may have swayed factors. And of course, DeltaRune isn't going to be struggling to perform on any reasonable platform. But ultimately, the tool didn't limit his choices enough to make the jump. At the end of the day, work to your strengths and consider your scope. Many people here are programmers so I understand if they want something more flexible than Gamemaker. But I wouldn't necessarily jump to Unreal Engine 4/5 if I'm making a small-ish scale 2D game.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Agreed, one thing I always reply when people ask about what language, middleware to use, I always give the non-answer of using whatever people are confortable with. Minecraft would probably never have happened, if Notch started by asking in the forums if he should use Java or not. Likewise many 8 and 16 bit titles started as BASIC, C, Pascal prototypes before being rewritten into Assembly, after their concept was proven, or thrown away before too much was invested into them. Discussing what languages, middleware, API, whatever, instead of actually designing the game is what slows development down.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  > Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers. This is not true in the slightest.
- pdrummond 4y ago
  Thanks :-) I don't agree that GML is designed for people who are not programmers though. I actually grew rather fond of GML (The language in Game Maker Studio) over the 2 years I learned to work with it (and that's coming from an experienced Software Engineer (TypeScript, Go, Clojure, Java, C/C++)). It's not perfect by any means, but it's very easy to get started with, has lots of features designed specifically for 2d gamedev, is actively improved by YoYo Games and getting better all the time. And it allows for rapid experimentation which was a huge benefit during development on Kells, given how many ideas where repeatedly thrown away.
crobertsbmw 4y ago
Still reading but your first game screenshot isn’t loading for me! Edit- a lot of images don’t seem to be working for me. I’m vowing this from mobile safari.
- pacaro 4y ago
  I'm having the same issue with images on Android. It's a great article though, I love your frankness with the downs as well as the ups of your process. FWIW, The Nintendo link is UK only, which is a mild trip hazard to people installing in other countries. I'm curious as to how my 8yr old enjoys this
petetnt 4y ago
Thanks for sharing this! Very inspiring and Kells seems like a fun game!
Rexxar 4y ago
It seems the game use some assets from "liberated pixel cup" (https://lpc.opengameart.org/ https://lpc.opengameart.org/) which are in GPLv3 / CC BY-SA 3.0. Does any one know how viral are this licenses with other assets and the game itself ? I would have avoided to use them for a commercial game personally but I'm maybe mistaken.
- ZiiS 4y ago
  GPLv3 is a very strange license to apply to artwork. It is specific to software. However I dont belive the is any intent for it to cover the game using the assets.
  - washbrain 4y ago
    Sure. But CC-BY-SA 3.0 is a very standard license to apply to art, and has similar expectations for sharing your game with CC-BY-SA.
    - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
      I don't know that it does have similar expectations for licensing your game under the same terms. This is ultimately for courts to decide. It's incredibly ambiguous if a game is a derivative work or a collection; The latter avoids virality.
    - ZiiS 4y ago
      The standard argument is: dose opening a CC-BY-SA document in a word processor effect the word processor's license? Even if you distributed the documents as a template inside the word processor's installer I don't think you could claim the word processor was a derivative work. The intent of the SA license is that if you also improve the the template you have to share the improvements. Having said that at least the Switch version will contain technological measures (from Nintendo) to prevent the sharing and adaption of the games assets. So even if the license is not at all viral it may not grant them permission to include the covered artwork.
- throwaway290 4y ago
habibur 4y ago
This article doesn't touch it as it's a new game they are developing, but I used to wonder a lot how much are indie game devs making? Is it worth it? Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it?
- ffhhj 4y ago
  > Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it? Only if you create one that is very popular, and that depends on many factors, developing games is a metagame.
- prawn 4y ago
  Back in 2014 we made an iOS game* that got several million plays and some local press but never made enough money to motivate further work. I still like it and play it when killing time on flights. If you were solo and/or had very low living costs or expectations, or got a feature to kickstart things more, maybe you could make a modest living. Doing it over, I think we'd probably put more time into making it a daily challenge or monetising differently or using a more neutral theme. * https://hexiledgame.com/ https://hexiledgame.com/
  - mh- 4y ago
    I played your game a good amount back when it came out. Don't remember how I discovered it. Lots of fun!
- japhib 4y ago
  Generally very, very little. You can generally take the number of Steam reviews on a game and multiply by 50 to get a rough, ballpark idea of how many sales the game has made. Considering this game has 3 reviews on Steam and costs $6, it’s unlikely the game has made over $1000 on that platform. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth making games, though! I’ve released two mobile games, still updating the second one, and although they’re a far cry from being profitable vs. the amount of time I’ve put into them, I still find the process and result very fulfilling.
  - 4y ago
lwilli 4y ago
Congrats on completing your game Paul! It was fun reading about your adventure building it, especially how you involved your son. I missed something though: how did it go when you first showed Ben the game? What was his reaction? I think it’d be nice to hear more about that. :)
- pdrummond 4y ago
  Thank you :-) It's difficult to remember to be honest because he was involved from very early on, when the game was barely playable. I remember showing him early prototypes and he used to give me "sympathy nods" because he didn't want to upset me, haha! It took (what felt like) months before the game was playable enough for him to enjoy it and by then he had already come up with many of the ideas and level designs himself.
flobosg 4y ago
Loved the Kell puns!
- pdrummond 4y ago
  Thanks :-) Some of the best fun I had was just coming up with funny level names. It became a bit of a challenge for family and friends to come up with better puns! Some highlights (none of them mine!) include "Kellraiser", "Jingle Kells", "Skellington", "Two kellholes are better than one", "For whom the Kells toll" and last but not least, "Kell Block H"!
rezic 4y ago
Thank you for the blog post! This has inspired me boot up GameMaker Studio 2 again. I usually come back to it now and then just to mess around, not really with the goal of making anything complete. It's been a while since I touched it last, but I made this back in 2018. Never worked on it past what's in the video but it was still fun to work on! https://youtu.be/fMbm2ZVL7zs https://youtu.be/fMbm2ZVL7zs
- RobertoG 4y ago
  Give a chance to Godot before committing to a close platform! https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/
  - rezic 4y ago
    I'm certainly not opposed to checking out alternatives.
  - ajdude 4y ago
    How well does godot handle exporting to video game consoles these days? While I cannot speak for the other posters, that was certainly factor in my decision to go with gamemaker studio 2.
    - rezic 4y ago
      From what I've seen, you have to use third party porting services. Godot being open source and not a legal entity prevents them from adding porting support in their engine because the console SDKs are secret and protected by NDAs. https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/tutorials/platform/consoles.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/tutorials/platform/conso...
- pdrummond 4y ago
  Thank you for reading it and I'm so happy to here it inspired you to fire up GMS2 again. Your game looks awesome! That's exactly how I worked on Kells - I just chipped away at it now and then for no other reason than because it was fun! Good times!
TuxPeepo26 4y ago
Great read and very inspiring, I think the end product really goes to show that creativity and a clear gameplay direction are worth way more than presentation. Excited to check out the game as soon as I get home !
nelsonic 4y ago
Can’t see if this is multiplayer on the Nintendo store.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  Says single player on nintendo.com and nintendo.co.uk
franciscop 4y ago
Images unfortunately don't work for me, Google (https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/) gives me a 403 and doesn't seem to like my VPN.
trgfdffd 4y ago
Great article! Just a thought: if it was that hard for OP to write the logic for the gravity manipulation, he should've taken this as an indication that it'd be hard for players to understand and learn this functionality too. Perhaps one small lesson missed?
- hbn 4y ago
  Is difficulty of implementation really a reliable indicator for the complexity in players understanding the mechanic? Jonathan Blow did a talk[1] at GDC a few years ago about implementing the time rewind mechanic in his game, Braid. It ended up being a pretty complex system that required a lot of ingenuity to come up with a design and implement it, but the end result is pretty straightforward and easy to understand for players. [1] https://youtu.be/8dinUbg2h70 https://youtu.be/8dinUbg2h70
  - trgfdffd 4y ago
    I propose that it depends on why it's difficult to implement. If the behaviour is easy to explain in English but requires a complex technical solution to enable it then that's one matter. However, if you struggle to even describe the behaviour in English then it is a good indicator that users may struggle to understand it too. I am assuming this is the case here. It may be that the OP had a very clear idea of how the gravity and all its edge cases would hang together but just struggled to code it. I interpreted the article's wording differently. I do think not being able to simply describe a key game mechanic in natural language is indicative that it may be hard for users to deduce too.
- pdrummond 4y ago
  OP here. I seriously thought about giving up on the gravity implementation many times, but not because the coding logic was difficult. I was more concerned that the player wouldn't find it compelling as I had early feedback it was way too confusing from player's perspective and I was too close to the game to notice it. In the end, as it turned out, it wasn't the gravity mechanic that was too confusing, it was how haphazardly I initially implemented it. After months of playtesting and tweaking the difficulty curve in the early levels, I finally hit the sweet spot (which was measured based on feedback from play testers - mainly family, friends and a few colleagues).
pjmlp 4y ago
Great story, thanks for sharing.
kuu 4y ago
Congratulations on the completion! That is a huge achievement. Thanks for sharing, it was a great read!
soegaard 4y ago
Hi Paul. Thanks for taking the time to write about your game. Since gravity plays such an important role in the game, it would be great to see a gif/video of how it works. It's a bit difficult to grasp from the screenshots.
- pdrummond 4y ago
  Thanks :-) It's always been a challenge to explain how the gravity works so in the end I kind of played on that fact in the game. Most players initially think of the "gravity tiles" as essentially directional arrows. So if you want to make the Kells go up, you place an "UP" tile. But what that really does is make the Kells essentially "fall upwards". I hope this realisation gradually builds up over the first 10 or so levels (which are designed to be tutorial levels), until a brilliant "AHA" moment! But I've seen friends reach level 50 still using the "directional arrow" tactic :-) I'll put all of this into another blog post but in the mean time there is a guide on Steam that explains this (and a whole lot more) in more detail here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2735826053 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=27358...

255 points by pdrummond 4y ago

I loved this. Thank you for sharing! I’m betting others will get to those levels as well ;) P.S. Love seeing that you made the site with WordPress! It’s gorgeous!

pizzathyme 4y ago

I love side projects that achieve a level of great pride. Congrats

japhib 4y ago

Congrats on the release OP! For anyone reading, if you’re a programmer by training, I’d recommend literally any game engine other than Game Maker Studio for creating your game. Unity is a great choice for beginners that lets you program in C#. Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers.

rtpg 4y ago
Unity suffers from being 3d by default (so you're kind of defaulted into "physics-activated 3d world" stuff), having very low discoverability of features, and a lot of googling to land on the Unity forums. If you're a programmer, there are a couple ways you can experience happiness: - Try one of the many "2d game library" things. They tend to be limited to playing sound, displaying gfx, and handling input. But if you're a programmer that will at least give you an idea of what is implemented and what isn't. - Use Unreal with Blueprints. "But I'm a programmer, let me write code!" Trust me, when you are using blueprints you both get a much more discoverable API, and can actually get all the fancy built-in 3d stuff to work. Also if you're not working on something by yourself, suddenly other people can help out a lot. - Use Game Maker Studio! Being a programmer means you might have some more systems thinking, but ultimately having stuff like tile editors easily means you're not going to spend a month building out your own little tools. Programming everything from scratch is overrated if you actually want to make something that works. But Unity has a lot of half-baked features and is actually pretty hard to get working nicely for so many things that it can easily end up being a massive source of incidental complexity.
- lastangryman 4y ago
  Obligatory Godot shout out which unlike Unity had has "native" 2D support and is a pleasure to work in.
Closi 4y ago
The best choice is the one that you, personally, will complete and build a full game in. Presumably OP knew how to use gamemaker studio, and could either choose between: 1) Starting to build the game straight away in Game Maker Studio and 2) Learning C# / Unity and then starting to build your own engine and plug together tile editors and things which will then let you build the game. In the case above, Option 1 will probably have more success as you are starting to build the thing rather than defering building the thing.
- johnnyanmac 4y ago
  Yup, Toby Fox more or less did this exact sort of research in 2020 while developing Deltarune, and came to similar conclusions: We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1. Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we've started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020. A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting). I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don't regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game's story and characters better. https://deltarune.com/update-092020/ https://deltarune.com/update-092020/ Obvious caveat: He already had development in the game on one engine so that may have swayed factors. And of course, DeltaRune isn't going to be struggling to perform on any reasonable platform. But ultimately, the tool didn't limit his choices enough to make the jump. At the end of the day, work to your strengths and consider your scope. Many people here are programmers so I understand if they want something more flexible than Gamemaker. But I wouldn't necessarily jump to Unreal Engine 4/5 if I'm making a small-ish scale 2D game.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Agreed, one thing I always reply when people ask about what language, middleware to use, I always give the non-answer of using whatever people are confortable with. Minecraft would probably never have happened, if Notch started by asking in the forums if he should use Java or not. Likewise many 8 and 16 bit titles started as BASIC, C, Pascal prototypes before being rewritten into Assembly, after their concept was proven, or thrown away before too much was invested into them. Discussing what languages, middleware, API, whatever, instead of actually designing the game is what slows development down.
jasonlotito 4y ago
> Game Maker Studio is specifically designed for people who are NOT programmers. This is not true in the slightest.
pdrummond 4y ago
Thanks :-) I don't agree that GML is designed for people who are not programmers though. I actually grew rather fond of GML (The language in Game Maker Studio) over the 2 years I learned to work with it (and that's coming from an experienced Software Engineer (TypeScript, Go, Clojure, Java, C/C++)). It's not perfect by any means, but it's very easy to get started with, has lots of features designed specifically for 2d gamedev, is actively improved by YoYo Games and getting better all the time. And it allows for rapid experimentation which was a huge benefit during development on Kells, given how many ideas where repeatedly thrown away.

crobertsbmw 4y ago

Still reading but your first game screenshot isn’t loading for me! Edit- a lot of images don’t seem to be working for me. I’m vowing this from mobile safari.

pacaro 4y ago
I'm having the same issue with images on Android. It's a great article though, I love your frankness with the downs as well as the ups of your process. FWIW, The Nintendo link is UK only, which is a mild trip hazard to people installing in other countries. I'm curious as to how my 8yr old enjoys this

petetnt 4y ago

Thanks for sharing this! Very inspiring and Kells seems like a fun game!

Rexxar 4y ago

It seems the game use some assets from "liberated pixel cup" (https://lpc.opengameart.org/ https://lpc.opengameart.org/) which are in GPLv3 / CC BY-SA 3.0. Does any one know how viral are this licenses with other assets and the game itself ? I would have avoided to use them for a commercial game personally but I'm maybe mistaken.

ZiiS 4y ago
GPLv3 is a very strange license to apply to artwork. It is specific to software. However I dont belive the is any intent for it to cover the game using the assets.
- washbrain 4y ago
  Sure. But CC-BY-SA 3.0 is a very standard license to apply to art, and has similar expectations for sharing your game with CC-BY-SA.
  - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
    I don't know that it does have similar expectations for licensing your game under the same terms. This is ultimately for courts to decide. It's incredibly ambiguous if a game is a derivative work or a collection; The latter avoids virality.
  - ZiiS 4y ago
    The standard argument is: dose opening a CC-BY-SA document in a word processor effect the word processor's license? Even if you distributed the documents as a template inside the word processor's installer I don't think you could claim the word processor was a derivative work. The intent of the SA license is that if you also improve the the template you have to share the improvements. Having said that at least the Switch version will contain technological measures (from Nintendo) to prevent the sharing and adaption of the games assets. So even if the license is not at all viral it may not grant them permission to include the covered artwork.
throwaway290 4y ago

habibur 4y ago

This article doesn't touch it as it's a new game they are developing, but I used to wonder a lot how much are indie game devs making? Is it worth it? Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it?

ffhhj 4y ago
> Can one expect to earn like a full time job working on it? Only if you create one that is very popular, and that depends on many factors, developing games is a metagame.
prawn 4y ago
Back in 2014 we made an iOS game* that got several million plays and some local press but never made enough money to motivate further work. I still like it and play it when killing time on flights. If you were solo and/or had very low living costs or expectations, or got a feature to kickstart things more, maybe you could make a modest living. Doing it over, I think we'd probably put more time into making it a daily challenge or monetising differently or using a more neutral theme. * https://hexiledgame.com/ https://hexiledgame.com/
- mh- 4y ago
  I played your game a good amount back when it came out. Don't remember how I discovered it. Lots of fun!
japhib 4y ago
Generally very, very little. You can generally take the number of Steam reviews on a game and multiply by 50 to get a rough, ballpark idea of how many sales the game has made. Considering this game has 3 reviews on Steam and costs $6, it’s unlikely the game has made over $1000 on that platform. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth making games, though! I’ve released two mobile games, still updating the second one, and although they’re a far cry from being profitable vs. the amount of time I’ve put into them, I still find the process and result very fulfilling.
- 4y ago

lwilli 4y ago

Congrats on completing your game Paul! It was fun reading about your adventure building it, especially how you involved your son. I missed something though: how did it go when you first showed Ben the game? What was his reaction? I think it’d be nice to hear more about that. :)

pdrummond 4y ago
Thank you :-) It's difficult to remember to be honest because he was involved from very early on, when the game was barely playable. I remember showing him early prototypes and he used to give me "sympathy nods" because he didn't want to upset me, haha! It took (what felt like) months before the game was playable enough for him to enjoy it and by then he had already come up with many of the ideas and level designs himself.

flobosg 4y ago

Loved the Kell puns!

pdrummond 4y ago
Thanks :-) Some of the best fun I had was just coming up with funny level names. It became a bit of a challenge for family and friends to come up with better puns! Some highlights (none of them mine!) include "Kellraiser", "Jingle Kells", "Skellington", "Two kellholes are better than one", "For whom the Kells toll" and last but not least, "Kell Block H"!

rezic 4y ago

Thank you for the blog post! This has inspired me boot up GameMaker Studio 2 again. I usually come back to it now and then just to mess around, not really with the goal of making anything complete. It's been a while since I touched it last, but I made this back in 2018. Never worked on it past what's in the video but it was still fun to work on! https://youtu.be/fMbm2ZVL7zs https://youtu.be/fMbm2ZVL7zs

RobertoG 4y ago
Give a chance to Godot before committing to a close platform! https://godotengine.org/ https://godotengine.org/
- rezic 4y ago
  I'm certainly not opposed to checking out alternatives.
- ajdude 4y ago
  How well does godot handle exporting to video game consoles these days? While I cannot speak for the other posters, that was certainly factor in my decision to go with gamemaker studio 2.
  - rezic 4y ago
    From what I've seen, you have to use third party porting services. Godot being open source and not a legal entity prevents them from adding porting support in their engine because the console SDKs are secret and protected by NDAs. https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/tutorials/platform/consoles.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.0/tutorials/platform/conso...
pdrummond 4y ago
Thank you for reading it and I'm so happy to here it inspired you to fire up GMS2 again. Your game looks awesome! That's exactly how I worked on Kells - I just chipped away at it now and then for no other reason than because it was fun! Good times!

TuxPeepo26 4y ago

Great read and very inspiring, I think the end product really goes to show that creativity and a clear gameplay direction are worth way more than presentation. Excited to check out the game as soon as I get home !

nelsonic 4y ago

Can’t see if this is multiplayer on the Nintendo store.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
Says single player on nintendo.com and nintendo.co.uk

franciscop 4y ago

Images unfortunately don't work for me, Google (https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/) gives me a 403 and doesn't seem to like my VPN.

trgfdffd 4y ago

Great article! Just a thought: if it was that hard for OP to write the logic for the gravity manipulation, he should've taken this as an indication that it'd be hard for players to understand and learn this functionality too. Perhaps one small lesson missed?

hbn 4y ago
Is difficulty of implementation really a reliable indicator for the complexity in players understanding the mechanic? Jonathan Blow did a talk[1] at GDC a few years ago about implementing the time rewind mechanic in his game, Braid. It ended up being a pretty complex system that required a lot of ingenuity to come up with a design and implement it, but the end result is pretty straightforward and easy to understand for players. [1] https://youtu.be/8dinUbg2h70 https://youtu.be/8dinUbg2h70
- trgfdffd 4y ago
  I propose that it depends on why it's difficult to implement. If the behaviour is easy to explain in English but requires a complex technical solution to enable it then that's one matter. However, if you struggle to even describe the behaviour in English then it is a good indicator that users may struggle to understand it too. I am assuming this is the case here. It may be that the OP had a very clear idea of how the gravity and all its edge cases would hang together but just struggled to code it. I interpreted the article's wording differently. I do think not being able to simply describe a key game mechanic in natural language is indicative that it may be hard for users to deduce too.
pdrummond 4y ago
OP here. I seriously thought about giving up on the gravity implementation many times, but not because the coding logic was difficult. I was more concerned that the player wouldn't find it compelling as I had early feedback it was way too confusing from player's perspective and I was too close to the game to notice it. In the end, as it turned out, it wasn't the gravity mechanic that was too confusing, it was how haphazardly I initially implemented it. After months of playtesting and tweaking the difficulty curve in the early levels, I finally hit the sweet spot (which was measured based on feedback from play testers - mainly family, friends and a few colleagues).

pjmlp 4y ago

Great story, thanks for sharing.

kuu 4y ago

Congratulations on the completion! That is a huge achievement. Thanks for sharing, it was a great read!

soegaard 4y ago

Hi Paul. Thanks for taking the time to write about your game. Since gravity plays such an important role in the game, it would be great to see a gif/video of how it works. It's a bit difficult to grasp from the screenshots.

pdrummond 4y ago
Thanks :-) It's always been a challenge to explain how the gravity works so in the end I kind of played on that fact in the game. Most players initially think of the "gravity tiles" as essentially directional arrows. So if you want to make the Kells go up, you place an "UP" tile. But what that really does is make the Kells essentially "fall upwards". I hope this realisation gradually builds up over the first 10 or so levels (which are designed to be tutorial levels), until a brilliant "AHA" moment! But I've seen friends reach level 50 still using the "directional arrow" tactic :-) I'll put all of this into another blog post but in the mean time there is a guide on Steam that explains this (and a whole lot more) in more detail here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2735826053 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=27358...