Triumphant return!

Life has been busy, what can I say...

To the left, you will notice a screen shot from the upcoming Starlight game I've been working on. Co-incidentally, the same screen shot I promised some month ago. My dog ate my computer, OK?

Admittedly, I haven't really been doing as much of my own stuff as I had planned. I have been getting valuable insider experience, which is great because I'm learning new things everyday and piecing together old stuff I didn't understand from before, but I still feel like I'm letting myself down by not running my own show as well.

So about Starlight then?

It's a sci-fi puzzle type deal, inspired in a game sense by Portal and in a musical sense by Muse, loosely tied together by a tale of intergalactic love and exploding stars. In all realism, I'm just one guy. I'm not expecting this to rival Portal, or indeed any game. That's not the point. The goal here is to produce something I'm proud of and learn from in regards to game design.

The basics that I want to learn, and emulate with this game revolve around guided thought. Each puzzle, or star system, is supposed to build on the last. The puzzles aren't supposed to seem random, there should be some logical link between them and previous ones. This in itself isn't remarkably tough, but I do think that also having a balanced difficulty curve on top of that will be the kicker. More on that later though, no doubt when I'm finishing up levels I'll have learned a little more and have a more informed view.

My reference to 'Eastern Game Design' in the previous post might have to wait a little longer to be explained. It's cold here and my hands are starting to freeze up. Basically, it's in regards to control scheme. Take Super Mario Bros for example; in the old ones all you had was movement and jump (and shoot I guess). The game required you to take these basic moves, and slowly increase your understanding of them and use them in progressively difficult ways. That's the kind of aim I was taking when I was thinking about Starlight; simple base control system that gets employed in different ways as the game goes on. But as I said before, thats a bedtime story for another night.

Meanwhile, my current plan will be to update this blog on Mondays and Fridays. I've got two different projects on the go, my nights divvied up and a brand new determination to ROCK ON THRU.

Bets on me keeping that schedule are currently sitting at 15:1.