Brenton and I have been working on a flash game for about a week to improve my AI programming. It's pretty much just a simple boss fight where you battle against the evil cursor that has imprisoned Jezzball. The original game was a favorite of ours and we wanted a game with a bit of a twist.
So this blog post is my reflections on how development went for the game and what we could have done to make it better. Game development is an interesting process and we're always looking for ways to improve.
Things that went right
We both had goals before the game on what we wanted to improve skill wise and so we wanted something that required more animation and AI than the previous games we had developed, which were mostly puzzle games. This helped us keep the scope at a minimum and gave us a clear goal to work towards. I really feel that we accomplished what we set forth to do and that was definitely a good thing.
Our original concept of the game was just an object that smashed into things. By coming up with the base mechanic early on it made us focus on simple problems first. The actual art and idea of using Jezzball as a theme came after we had a working prototype. Instead of getting a ton of art done on the game and then scrapping it we just had the programming working while we tried to make it feel as fun as possible.
We also used the Flixel framework for flash to quickly get a game up and running. This has really useful classes that make it easy to start a new project, handle sprite loading, collision, and other nice features that sped up the prototyping process.
Things we learned
Adding music and sound effects to a game really help make a game fun. I used FamiTracker for the music and sfx which I had never used before but it has a pretty short learning curve (compared to other trackers) and I was able to compose some simple music. We both wanted it to be a chiptune cover and while I considered MilkyTracker I didn't want to take the time to set up some complex samples/instruments. Even the most basic music can help make the game better.
Polishing even a simple game takes time. We probably spent just as much time polishing the game as we did making the original prototype. The actual gameplay was done in two nights and we spent about three more finishing up the game to make it feel right and to add elements like the gui, main menu and instructions screen.
What we could have done differently
I'd love to have more people testing the game before releasing it but for the most part we showed it to friend and family to gauge difficulty and see what needed to be added to the game. It was surprising to find what people had troubles with and the charge attack was not clearly understood until we added the meter.
Final Thoughts
The game was meant to be a learning experience but also something we could polish as much as possible. I feel it was successful for what it was and hope other people will enjoy it. Obviously knowing about the original Jezzball game will help it make sense but I feel the gameplay stands up on it's own.