The Bloody Glade 99.9% Complete

I just realized that it has been about 9 months since I posted about the progress of The Bloody Glade. At the time I estimated it to be 80% complete. For the most part that was accurate -- as with most projects during the later phase it became difficult to maintain pace and focus, so I took a break from it to focus on other projects and allow my enthusiasm for the project to be naturally rejuvenated.

I find that pushing myself too hard with a single project for too long eventually starts to rapidly diminish how much I like the game and to hinder progress. Taking a break and coming back to it later gives some perspective and a fresh eye.

I recently took to fixing those bugs and issues that I had been avoiding, and added a bit more polish, tweaked the gameplay and stats a bit, and removed a few game mechanics. One of the main mechanics I disabled was quick-time events for spell-casting. Previously you'd need to perform rapid tap or swipe motions in order to successfully cast a spell. In theory it sounds good, but in practice it felt like it interfered with the flow and pace of the game. So I decided to streamline and simplify it. I find the new, simpler version more fun.

A big problem I faced was performance on mobile devices. I found that creating enemy characters on the fly, as each stage progressed, was creating lag spikes and momentary freezes. It was nothing dramatic, but enough to provide an inferior gameplay experience to what I was experiencing on PC. I eventually found a simple solution -- simply pre-spawn all characters at the start of each level and enable / disable them as needed.

I've finished creating the promotional content and have thoroughly tested it on iPad and iPhone. There was an obscure crash that was happening during the final boss battle but, I think I've fixed it now. Another round of testing should verify this (hence me not making the 100% complete claim, and saying 99.9% instead).

That makes two games pretty much ready for release: McGrimm's Time Trap (yes, I still haven't released it) and The Bloody Glade. I'm still deciding which to focus on releasing first.

No Crashy Spaceship

In late January this year I was close to having Doombot Arena ready for release. At the time I wanted to focus on mini-games where I could keep the scope really small so that I could focus on actually releasing them and get familiar with the deployment process on the Apple store. I decided to leverage a lot of the work I'd done on Doombot Arena and build a similarly small-in-scope game based on time challenges. I started working on a racing game, but found that the standard techniques suggested for car physics in Unity to provide an experience that was not quite as fun, frantic and simple as I was looking for. And so I decided to change course and go for a spline-following approach. The result was No Crashy Spaceship, a game which is essentially an infinite-runner (a genre in which you attempt to dodge obstacles to see how long you can survive).

Note before I proceed: I have interspersed this wall of text with a few screenshots to make viewing this blog post less of a chore to read.

I have subsequently started working on games that are somewhat larger in scope -- games that I am more passionate about. As a result, my enthusiasm started to wane on this project (my larger projects running concurrently just offered more of a challenge). However, I recently decided (after looking at the graveyard of unfinished and almost-finished projects I have lying around) that I need to stay the course and make more of an effort to finish and release.

The overall look of the game was inspired by Tron (having watched the animated series I became quite fond of the dark background contrasted with bright lights; it's a unique sci-fi look that I feel is very effective). The initial work-in-progress name was 'Lunatic Skyway', but after chatting to some work colleagues about it we concluded that the name was a bit bland and generic. After throwing around a few names I threw out the whacky 'No Crashy Spaceship' idea (as a joke). There were laughs all-round and unanimous approval, and so I decided to go with it.

Initially it was far more fast-paced and frenetic. I played it so much during testing that to me this felt like a suitable level of challenge. User-testing confirmed that I was utterly mad -- the game was completely intimidating to first time players. So I have toned it down a lot. When I watch friends play it on my iPad I'm always commenting about how I've made it too easy (the whole point in my mind was for it to be ridiculously difficult to simply not die almost immediately -- think Flappy Bird levels of frustration). However, not a single person who has tested it agrees and the consensus seems to be that having a slightly gentler difficulty curve makes it more fun. The speed does ramp up significantly with each lap though. I laughed when people were commenting how fast it gets a few laps in (my initial speed was WAY faster than that, even on the first lap). I think I have to acknowledge that I have an overly active brain though (and the attention span of a newt) -- a wiser course action is to accept that complete sensory overload isn't palatable to everyone.

As it stands it is pretty much ready for release, though my latest play-through did uncover one or two minor bugs which I'll have to fix first. Creating the promotional screenshots (which are the images you see here) has been a bit of a trial because the Apple store requires images of various vastly differing resolutions and aspect ratios -- trying to cater for all is a bit of a nightmare. This is one of the tasks that I have been avoiding. I could have released a few months back had I not been so reluctant to just whip myself on the back (like a Catholic monk fervently self-flagellating himself) to inspire enthusiasm and force me to go through the schlep of it all.

Bloody Glade Update

The Bloody Glade is a side-scrolling hack-'n-slash / light RPG targeting mobile devices (primarily iPad and iPhones right now). I started work on it at the start of the year and have devoted a lot of time to it.

It's larger in scope than some of my previous personal projects, but I tried to keep the scope of the game at least manageable. I was inspired to create it when playing through the original Golden Axe (I have it as part of a retro Sega game pack for PS3). I spent a lot of time in the dingy arcade section in a shop down the road from my childhood home playing it when I was about 9 years old, so it brought back fond memories.

I could complete Golden Axe in about 20 minutes, and I liked the idea of a fairly short session where you could actually get through a game, even if it is fairly mindless and straight-forward button-mashing (though I've tried to add a bit more strategy into The Bloody Glade).

A few nights back I spent a lot of time creating a new world map (I wasn't satisfied with what I had before). I wanted to give the player the option to choose between various routes to give some incentive to replay the game once completed. Getting the map to have the feel I wanted was quite frustrating and time-consuming, but I'm happy with the end-result.

At the moment I am planning on making 3 playable characters: the wizard, the enchantress and the abomination. I have around 8 enemy character types so far. Getting enough content in is a concern (the moment a game starts visually resembling the larger, professional games people are used to, they start to expect more overall), but I'll deal with that later.

The spells I've implemented so far are a fireball, an ice orb, hailstorm (reminiscent of the ice blizzard in Warcraft 2), earth shatter (pretty much an earthquake) and lightning storm (which at the moment is a bit over-the-top, but fun). I have another one where a dragon swoops down partially implemented, though it looks pretty cheesy at the moment (a friend laughed when he saw it, that bastard).

The game has a few RPG elements, including a very basic inventory system and leveling
system. These have been deliberately keep very simple though, since I want to target a broader, more casual audience than the typical RPG player, and avoid overly complex game mechanics. At the moment, most of the game mechanics revolve around:

• selecting which characters to attack
• choosing when to consume health and mana potions
• deciding when to cast spells (some of which require quick-time events to be cast successfully) and who to target
• choosing which spells to learn when leveling up
• choosing a route to follow in the world map

I have a few plans for adding to this a bit (I want it simple, but not too simple, I don't want it to feel like a brainless exercise in simply tapping on bad guys). So far it actually feels fun so I'm feeling optimistic.

Below are a few of the items that have a chance of being spawned by slain enemies. Each item gives you a perk / buff. When you die there is a resurrection penalty (i.e. you can continue the game, but at a cost). One of the potential penalties is removing items you have collected.