Another week, not a ton of progress. This week, I replaced the player and enemy artwork with lower-res art because I’m going for a semi-retro look. There’s still tons to do, especially determining what the best option is for level objectives. I want to add some light puzzle elements, and there are enemies and light sources. Right now, the objective is just to kill all the zombies, but I definitely do not like this as final objective. The issue I have with “kill everything” in this game is that you can barely see anything, and I feel like it would be super frustrating to kill all but one enemy, then need to search for the last one while your light runs out. The goals I’m thinking of at the moment are escaping or searching for a specific item. This has the same issue though, to where your light can be running out, but you can’t find the item and can’t find more light. This next week I’m going to spend figuring out what good objectives would be given the current restraints of the game. Things can always be adjusted, but I currently like the idea of the light reducing your vision and your time to survive. It forces you to go and look for the objective, whatever that might be. You can’t wait for things to come to you, you can’t just hide and hope for the best, you need to face the problem and put yourself in danger to escape.
One potential option: each level has a goal that isn’t immediately apparent to the player or explained. It requires the player to try different things until the level is completed. This could be killing everything in the level, or finding a specific item, or getting to a location. You’re dropped in with zero guidance, and you just need to explore until you figure out the goal of the level. There’s a lot to consider for sure.
I just want to make the best game I can (given a very small budget, working part time, and having a super small scope).
Here’s a video of what I’ve got so far:
Kind of Antsy 