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.