Minimalist Metroidvania: Basics

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For all 2 of you that are reading this and wondering what “Daily Game Design” is, let me briefly explain. Basically, I feel like I’ve had less motivation for game development lately, and a not-insignificant cause of this issue is that I haven’t been thinking about ideas for games in my spare time. To help get back into this habit and make it more reliable and consistent, I’d like to start writing short posts on game design everyday to get those creative juices flowing. They won’t be very long and they probably won’t be particularly great, but they should at least be interesting. Plus, it’ll finally get some regular content up on this sorry excuse for a blog. Anyway, let’s dive into it. Today’s Topic: Minimalist Metroidvania Gameplay The Metroidvania genre generally consists of games with large, sprawling world that are packed to the gills with different areas, enemies, bosses,…

Gather Released

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After several months working on it (and no time spent blogging about it, because I didn’t realize I just needed to restart the server to get this blog up and running again), my first game, “Gather”, is complete! You can download it and see screenshots here. It’s currently available for Windows and Linux (Mac version coming soon – I just need a Mac computer to build it, since Processing requires that for some reason). I won’t be putting up a full post-mortem right this moment, but will probably revisit at some point in the future. For now, I’m hoping to move on to building new projects. The next one is small, so it should be done by the end of February, but it’s going to be something interesting – even artistic, after a fashion. Check back here for any and all updates.

Anomaly and Character Vignettes

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I haven’t really made any progress on this project over the past 2 months (DMing has eaten into my creative time a lot), but I’ve still been thinking about it quite a bit. As usual, after some analysis I realized that there were still some serious issues with the initial concept. I had originally been planning to have the game take place over a relatively large environment composed of multiple separate areas for the player to explore, which would comprise several hours of playtime in total. It’s clear now that this was still a little too ambitious in scope. Even starting the iteration process with a short and sweet demo, this project would be a rather large undertaking compared to my prior development experience (which is to say, practically nothing). So I’m taking things down a peg and trying to fit the whole game into an hour-long experience, tops. Making…

Minimalist Game Design Brainstorming

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With the new year fast approaching, I feel an urge to create something new. Now that I’m done with my undergrad and have my work situation settled for the moment, it’s a great opportunity to reinvent myself and put my free time towards a creative endeavor. In short, I want to take a proper stab at making a simple computer game. For the past couple years I’ve had a number of ideas rolling around in my head, but haven’t really had the opportunity to pursue any of them. As usual, most were hideously out of the realistic scope of my abilities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. My interest is in making narrative-based games, but I’ve too often used that as a crutch to build out long, plot-heavy concepts instead of focusing on practical, resource-independent game design. This time, I want to come up with a solid set of mechanics and fit…