For this past sprint, our team has made it past the Initial Concepts phase and have finally started production of our game Toybox Shooter (working title). For the most part, we already had a great portion of the game designed and planned out. We want short levels with simplistic mechanics that allow the player to really master the gameplay and have tons of ability for replay-ability. The replay-ability comes from two aspects of the gameplay experience. The first being the stars that the players get from completing each level. These stars are given to the player depending on how quickly they beat each level. If the players beat the fastest time, then they get 3 stars with a chance to get 3 stars for each level. Basically if the players need more stars they can redo levels and try to speed-run them in order to unlock the stars. These stars can then be used in the world menu to upgrade the player’s stats. So the replay-ability comes from the player’s desire to upgrade their character’s skill-set. The other replay-able system comes from the limiting factor of bullets. When the players finish a level, they will start the next level with the same amount of bullets that they finished the last level with which will eventually mean the players will most likely run out of bullets. The players will then have to redo some levels to try and get enough bullets through past levels so they can beat the newer levels.
This sprint, I was away attending the Yearly VR conference called Oculus Connect 4 and so I wasn’t able to work on the project during the conference, but I did start planning more design documents for how exactly the progression will work, and what aspects of the player, that will be able to be upgraded. However, now that I am back and able to work again, I will be putting in extra time with the next couple of sprints to really make sure we can challenge every phase without having to resort to too much crunch.
Ethan Loewald 