12 Hour PCT Game Jam Results (Phantom Dungeons)

     I made a game called Phantom Dungeons for the 12 Hour PCT Game Jam 2015 competition. It was supposed to be a game where you select a hero, kill things with a boomerang that gets more awesome and explosive as you level up, collect gems to buy loot, and find secret shards hidden in destructible blocks that combine to unlock a character of your choice.

     I got as far as a basic game loop before running out of time. 12 hours was a lot shorter than I expected. I know to shoot for an even smaller scope next time though. Winners of the contest get Amazon gift cards of varying amounts and I'm not sure if I won a prize at all. Probably won't find out until the middle of finals week.

     I want to finish this game at some point and release it for a buck on Mobile and PC. I want this to be an experiment with game feel to practice for an action RPG I want to do down the line. The final version of Phantom Dungeons will be a lot prettier, have a lot more content, and feature either well thought out or randomly generated dungeons.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #18 (Game Jam & Macbook Confirmed)

     Mentally preparing to do nothing but develop this game. Last week was eaten up by the game jam (more on that this Friday), more group projects, and spending time with my girlfriend before entering a 3 month crunch over summer break. As far as progress goes, I finally have the means to port Unicorn Training to iOS and confirm that Battle Gem Ponies will be on iOS from day one!

For information on what's coming and what was done, head on down below the break!

BGP Mobile Class Playtest

     My final project / test for my Mobile Game Design class was to playtest Battle Gem Ponies with a complete stranger who's not familiar with RPGs (and most games in general) and get valuable feedback on accessibility. This little session gave me a lot of ideas on how to make the game's presentation more clear on a pick-up-and-play level. I adjusted some menu elements and added a small bit of polish to my "extras" notes in the design document.

     In terms of readability improvements I'm going to have all clickable buttons shimmer every few seconds (like you see in match 4 games) and realign things in the class matchup menu to make it clear that there are 2 rows of classes to look at instead of 4.

     The playtester also gave me the idea of color theming the attacks to match that of their classes. For example, Scatter Bomb is a Surge/Fire move that looks like a bunch of tiny yellow orbs being tossed at the enemy's feet before exploding into red-orange flames. I was just going to have random things that looked cool, but this gives me a solid design place to start from.

     I'll be putting as many of these new readability features as I can into the first public demo.

Battle Gem Ponies DevLog #17 (Demo Plans & GIFs)

Finally tried out GIFs and I love it.

     This has been a week of GIFs and madness. New tricks were learned but development time took a backseat all week. With a truck's worth of school out of the way I can get back to building on my game. There's a ton of work to do before the public demo I want to get out just as summer break starts. Get an eyeful of game development and future plans below the break.