Moving Through Space

My goal for this first chunk of the semester has been designing new mechanics to test and iterate on for Sunbots, primarily to improve the gameplay depth and add some longer term appeal to the game. As a platforming game the player's main engagement with the game is how they move around and get past obstacles, so I tried to develop some new mechanics along this line. The player is somewhat bound to the paths of the planets as they rotate around the star at the center of each level, which makes level design a little difficult. What if the player was able to recontextualize the game space to further their goal? The system I built for this is a pair of planetary "upgrades" that the player can lay down on a planet to give it a special quality. One upgrade draws all the energy from other nearby planets to its surface, and the other upgrade repels the enemies that seek out energy and devour it. The upgrades are mutually exclusive so the player has to plan around how they will build up the planets to make their energy economy as efficient as possible. The goal is to allow the player to maximize their time spent gathering energy by concentrating the energy at a few points rather than distributed across the whole map. The enemy repel planets serve as guards for the economy planets so the player can focus their attention on a single area at a time without losing their investment elsewhere. 

This upgrade system adds a strategy element that we're experimenting with, but we're not sure how well it will mesh with our goals for the game experience. We want Sunbots to be a somewhat casual, low stress game, and if the strategy elements get too intense then that could throw off the appeal, even if it doesn't change the difficulty. We're beginning our testing cycle this weekend and with any luck we'll get some good feedback on which systems are improving the experience and which feel superfluous or too complicated. 

Among the Sunbots

My last semester of game production at Champlain has begun, and in the shuffle at the end of last semester I landed on Team Supergeneric and their project "Sunbots". I'm real excited to get to work on this team and they've already got a great core for us to expand on. As it stands, Sunbots is a cute, space-themed platformer with a pretty unique physical space. The player character jumps around a solar system from planet to planet, collecting "energy" that they can throw around as a sort of jet propulsion while not in contact with a planet. The goal is to collect enough to recharge the star at the center of the system. The game is pretty solid right now, but it is very linear. Our team's goal for the gameplay is to create enough depth for longer term player engagement, but we don't want to overcomplicate it and potentially exclude more casual players. My job for these first couple of weeks before greenlight, where our design will largely have to be locked in, is to find this balance of depth and accessibility. 

On my first experience with Sunbots I was most excited by the potential in their energy system. Right now you can toss your energy into planets, which covers the normally barren balls of rock with life. Additional energy is constantly generated by these living planets, which the player can return to later and "harvest". Right now the player's goal is very clear and a little too simplistic. The player jumps between planets, collects energy, and "seeds" the energy into a few planets to build up a larger quantity, which they toss into the star to finish the level. I feel like there's a lot of potential for interesting economic mechanics in the way the player collects and utilizes energy, kind of like a Harvest Moon in space. My initial exploration and testing is going to be along these lines, and I'm excited to see where it will go.