Making the Lose Condition

     Unicorn Quest needs to be hard for two main reasons. To lengthen playtime and feel like a genuine arcade style shooter.  But losing can be frustrating if it doesn't feel right. One thing I noticed about myself when playing things like Trials or Flappy Bird is that a quick redo makes the whole thing less painful and more like "Just one more time." and I'd rather have players quickly resetting battles when they lose than going all the way back to a checkpoint and losing items, experience, etc.

     In Unicorn Quest, if you lose all your hearts you can just reset the fight or exit to the entrance of the overworld room where the fight started. No penalties. If you die in the overworld (traps, lava pits, etc.) you reset to that rooms entrance as if walking in for the first time, but without losing items. Chests you opened will stay open and beaten enemies won't respawn.

    When you beat a boss, it'll be a hard battle that you came out on top of. You tried and failed, switched strategies and won. I want players to feel good about themselves when beating enemies, not just plowing through an easy game in a couple of days.

Now I just have to finish up death animations.

Why On Mobile?

     I was reading an article on Gamasutra a while back and it got me thinking about why I chose mobile as my primary platform in the first place. I basically want to help push expectations up. I know it's a niche but I believe there is a place for people who want deeper game experiences beyond minute to minute puzzles. I know the need exists because I know I've wanted that since I first bought an iPod Touch (9th grade). A big RPG adventure that's playable in small chunks.

     Day-by-day you spend minutes here and there trying to gather enough gold to restock potions and attempt a hard dungeon instead of collecting coins to keep crops alive. I'd rather have a tough Pokemon match than beat a level in Candy Crush when I'm on the toilet. It's possible for a single person to make a game with SNES quality in about a year thanks to the tools out there. I see the pocket sized mobile devices packing the power of PlayStation 2's and think this is a chance for really awesome games to come out, but the majority of what's out there isn't appealing to me.

     So in short, I'm making games that I wish existed. That's what most indies are after too right?

Unicorn Quest Progress Video #11

     Feels like this game got really shiny in just a few days. Wrapping up the combat's finishing touches makes the whole thing feel nicer. There's little elemental particle effects, shiny gems to collect, and big icons showing you what spell is equipped. There's a ton of other subtle improvements and reorganized code, but I'm in rapid development fever right now so I'd rather toss up videos more frequently than make multiple very long posts talking about what's been added.

So here's a link to the video. See combat in action!

     My gamedev fever should die down a bit once I'm working on something harder (like the speech/cutscene code) and I can go into detail on most of the improved mechanics.

Adventures in Equica: Combat Score System

     I was watching my girlfriend play Super Paper Mario and was fascinated by the way simple points for killing enemies made the game feel special. I imagined such a thing in an RPG and the idea felt exactly like what I wanted to try in Unicorn Quest. Now its shooter aspect feels more arcade styled.

     You get points for killing baddies and lose some for getting hit. When the last wave of enemies is cleared, victory fanfare will play and gems and experience crystals  for you to collect will spawn randomly across the battlefield. After you pick up everything you want you press an exit button to leave the battle room. The amount of rewards appearing depends on your score.

    I'm still balancing how many points are worth an experience point/gem but it's next on my list. Now that combat is working it's time to add in a bunch of missing features to make battling feel more solid. Also, if you're curious about the font used, its 8 Bit Wonder by Joiro Hatgaya from dafont.com. There's a black copied layer of text behind it to give it a solid appearance.