Sometimes I forget why I started this game to begin with. I would play games they would have glaring issues and I would think, "This sucks, I could devise a better system".

When we are the outside observer, we don't understand why things are the way they are in a game, conversly, as the designer, we often get so far up our own ass on what we're working on, we end up keeping things just because we don't want to squander all the work we've put into them, it doesn't fit our "vision".

Visions are stupid.

I have been playtesting the game and there are glaring issues i have ignored for too long, and I'm so glad I took the time to just think for a bit about what will make the game better. Sometimes you have to take yourself out of the tasklists, take yourself away from the notions of all the things you have "almost finished and taken off the "Todo" list.

"What's going to make your game more fun"

So i've come up with a few things I will be surgically removing from the game in the near future. The quest system I just spent a day on, it's gone, and hte quests themselves I spend days no, they're gone too. Maybe I use them in hte future, probably not.

I'm going to open up the ocean and make it more explorable. This is a roguelike damnit! I'm not going to hold the player hand, i'm giong to start building up an expansive ocean and create interesting and fun places to explore. I may even expand vertically as stupid as that is. I think it shouldn't be too hard to create smaller "ponds" for the player... I'm stoping myself here. Executive decision, ponds are a stupid frigin' idea, the art it's giong to take to add this shit and make it passable is too much, not to mention the design headache. I'm nipping this idea in the bud right here and now. Can your game be awesome without an idea? Does that idea elevate the rest of the content? Gut that stupid crap.

I'm going to be working to create areas of interest with unique enemies and playstyles, I want the player to feel emboldened to go to areas after they've powered themselves up a bit. I'm going to put areas in the game that are really hard, some that are easy, and i'm giong to mix it up a bit by swapping their locations around in interesting ways. I don't want difficulty to be a boring ordeal of just swimming ot the right until you can't fight stuff. I want there to be a sense of adventure and mystique.

Until now the environment has kinda always been this massive open slew of floating things with no flow, no cavernous area with branching paths, no dead ends, unique vistas or locals that added any real value to the game in their sense of scale or unique geometric styling. All areas have been this same boring open area full of random fish. I want to try spicing that up. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but I want to have more than just a bland open ocean, and I finally have a level setup that facilitates me making that without too much headache or overhead, and it's only now dawning on me that I should spend a little time making that ocean. For so long I've felt I was trapped in this small ocean of gameplay, that the core mechanics of seacrit just never warranted a larger play area. I have spent so much time in these shallows that it's taken a bit for me to realize that SeaCrit is growing too big for the small pond it now resides, I need to open things up and start developing pipelines for a true sprawling roguelike experience full of adventure and strategic and rewarding exploration.

So i'll have to spend a day or so building up these new areas and caverns, setting up NPC spawns and what not. I'm not 100% sure what will be most fun. Should I add lots of camp spawns? Should I make zones full of random NPC spawns? I HAVE NO IDEA! But sometimes that's ok, sometimes you just have to try as you go because you're trying new innovative shit. I'm hoping a wide variety of setups gets in and each area is its own unique flavor of play.

It's a good problem to have, but I'm torn on what to work on next. Should I open up the ocean and start creating new areas, or should I continue to tune and tweak the core systems of play?

Whew, It's going to take at least a couple days of solid dev to get this all in, and a bit more combined with feedback to make it fun, but I'm pretty excited, I think (as ever) that I'm on the verge of this game finding its identity. All the items, all the progression mechanics, and the gameplay, all these crazed fish, all these combat mechanics... I think for the first time they will be aligned in a way that is greater than the sum of their parts.

I have a bit of trepidation, it might be a bit hard to find the right difficulty curve, i may have to spend a lot of time tweaking and tuning things over and over again before things start feeling "right", but i'm cautiously optimistic, the groundwork is all here, just a bit of tweaking to the systems of spawning and difficulty and laying out a new level design and putting in more NPC's and such, and this could really start being something soon. 

I also have some plans to work more and more on more visual cues to show the player that they have certain effects and upgrades and what not to convey these mechanics without assuming the player will open their UI and read about their growing powers (they're not going to do that). 

It's funny, I'm more worried I won't get enough sleep to tackle this mountain of work than I am worried the game won't be fun. Maybe I'm crazy, I mean I know i'm crazy, I just hope my expectations aren't out of line for SeaCrit, WE WILL SEE!

Time will tell...

Methinks I'm blogging too much.

Time for less talk, more action. (I mean... I've been getting shittons of work done lately... here I go blathering too much again.)

Last blathering and gamedev thought of the day. If you're not excited for the future of your project, you're doing it wrong. Maybe you added too much extra crap taking away from what the agile, lithe, core experience could be, maybe you're moving forward too soon and you have neglected the foundations, maybe you became too jaded and lost that sense of wonder that compels you to want to add that awesome new thing. Finding the fun is more than just finding that element in your game that's going to unlock the endorphins in the end users brain, it's about finding that spark that drove you to gamedev in the first place. Stop making a shitty game and start making a game that isn't so shit! (I feel compelled as ever to say that SeaCrit may indeed still be shit and that I am probably still crazy in my optimism)