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.