EADLBDE: Postmortem

I started this game with the idea of making an easy, simple one-button game in one afternoon because I had little time that week. I did not finished it that afternoon for sure. The concept of the game was somethin like Asteroids, a ship that shoots things. When you press the button, the ship rotates. When you release it, it shoots and starts advancing.

I implemented the basic movement. I ended up with a prototype that reminded me a lot to Mírame and Drillship TURBO, but I decided to continue and try to give it a spin and do something different . I added a little dash at the button release because it felt really nice. I really focused on kinestetics at this stage, wich was mistake.

When I added an enemy I realized the kinestetics were obstructing the original idea. You were launched at high speed right at the face of the enemies, so a ranged action like shooting didn't make any sense. Also, if you miss by a little margin, the enemy kills you with no time to react at all. I could have fixed that by removing the bullets and making the player itself inflict damage when dashing, but that was just Drillship TURBO again, I didn't want that.

Then I started rolling downhill, applying patches to the design one after another:

"Ok, what if it shoots when is rotating?"
"If I do that the player will be invencible if tha button is alwas pressed... I'll add an overheat mechanic that kills the player in that case!"
"Uhhhh, its fine but, one-way rotation isn't great for aiming... Fuck it, now this is a 2 button game, you rotate left and right"
"If I'm gonna aim with 2 buttons... Wouldn't be easier to aim with the mouse?"
Etc, etc. I lost the focus of the project and the original idea was diluted.

I stoped. I gave a lot of thought to it, and itemize the esential elements of the premise, and interesting ideas I encountered during the chaotic phase. I stuck with the following:

• The player shoots when rotates at button press, and advances when button releases.
• The player overheats if the button is pressed for a long time.
• I keep the dash but with reduced speed. It is for positioning, not for 'graceful movement'.

What really made the thing click for me was reducing the speed of the dash. This lets the player react to off-screen enemies, and lets the other mechanics do their job. Looking back, the main problem with this project was to stick with the snappy long dash only because it felt good. I played with some other parameters like enemy speed, shooting frequenzy and the rotation speed (I added a little boost the first instances of the rotation to ease aiming enemies at the rear). All the pieces started falling into place.

I added eggplants and called it a day. Leasons learned today: don't do the game feel right at the beginning. Remember you original idea, what you like about it, and reconsider if the added elements during testing complement them.