Null Error devlog (GWJ #69)

Last Wild Jam, I made the The Translator. The idea behind that game was a platformer where you fought enemies using a weapon that could convert a combination of any two resources into a weapon on the fly (think Kirby 64).

That concept was cool, but was a bad fit for a jam. It introduces too many edge cases right from the start. I had four resource types - I originally wanted eight - which meant that ten total weapons had to be coded up for the game to work as intended. All of the time went into programming and very little of it went into art, level design, or general polish. I think the end result was a game that was funnish to play as long as you could get past the controls and look.

So, for this one I wanted to focus on starting the scope as small as possible, and then build up. I had just posted a shoot 'em up on my site, and was working on another one at the time, so it just seemed to make the most sense to keep that momentum and make another one for this jam.

Even with a small scope in mind, I still way overscoped this project at the outset. The first thing I programmed was an upgrade system that ended up not making the final cut at all. I also wanted boss enemies, roguelike elements, and multiple weapon types. None of that happened.

Still, this one turned out better. Where this one started working was when I stopped focusing on the 'big' ideas like the ones I listed above, and started focusing on just making the simple core gameplay loop as satisfying as possible. It's true that this game is pretty simple, but I feel like it's pretty fun to blow up the garbage collectors.

Shoutout to paperjack at the GWJ help desk for the great glitch shader that did a lot of work in this game.

Next time, I'd like to build my game like an onion. You start at the very center, and then work your way out one layer at a time. Remembering that if any layer is rotten, people will just throw the whole thing out.

Thanks for playing,

TBM