Halloween Iteration

Happy Halloween everyone who reads this (which I imagine is exclusively me, but next year)!

Currently Listening to Dracula by Mystic Prophecy 

Currently Reading Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

When I started this game it was part of a coffee themed gamejam, and it was meant to be spooky.  It's obviously as scary as a bowl of cereal at the moment but that was because my plan was different at the start.  The graphics I had at the time of my first iteration, and the tone I was going for, meant that the audio in the original version was closer to Resident Evil on the Playstation 1 (PSX).

After I decided that it would be better if I changed a few things (and due to it's utter terribleness those things  would have included deleting everything and burning down my apartment),   I decided to make it a bit more joyful and this has led me to learn a little about proper prototyping.

As I was  starting with Resident Evil 1 in mind before reducing the scope to be more inspired by Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, this meant that a lot of my planning has been thrown out. I nearly gave up on the game entirely yesterday with the motivation to start something new, but I got it into my head that there's no point in quitting when there are still things I could technically do to make it better. Chances are if I handed this game to a more experienced game developer they would give it a bath and a hug and brush its hair into something worth playing.

So I decided I should only abandon it when I can't do anything else to it/ for it. The book I'm reading on game prototyping and development is really helping at the moment.  I've learned some helpful tools such as  creating a burndown sheet which has allowed me to focus better on what my goals are and attack each of them with a single mindedness instead of trying to "make the game better", I have resorted to "adding lives" and "improving lives logic" for example.  It still sucks zombie balls, but I'm feeling optimistic that I can at least learn enough to improve myself.