Suzy Cube Update: Friday April 22, 2016

#suzycube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity 

Sorry about missing last week's update, folks. I was out of country on a little vacation!

I would feel bad about it, but I got to watch a leatherback sea turtle lay eggs... So... Too bad?

Seeing as we only got in a couple days ago, I've only been back at my desk for about a day and a half, so today's update is going to be a short one.

Well, Isn't That Special?

What I decided to do with these last couple of days was to hook up functionality for the Special World!!! OOOH!!! The idea behind the special world is to reward dedicated players by awarding them some extra content for finding all the stars in the game.

The Wrong Way

First, I want to explain what my original plan was for unlocking the special world. Initially, I intended to simply unlock access to the special world once a player had found all of the stars in the regular levels. Discussing this with friends back at GDC, it was pointed out to me that this lacked discoverability as a player would have to have decided, ahead of time, to set out to find all the stars in order to even know there was a reward for doing so.

The Right-er Way

The suggestion that came out of this conversation was to split the Special World stages up to be awarded in chunks. So, that's what I've implemented. Now, instead of gaining access to the Special World by finding all the stars, you gain access to the Special World by finding all the stars in a single World. Finding all the stars in each World will unlock one of the locked sets you see in the screenshot above.

But at What Cost!?

So what are the Special World Stages and won't this extra content set the project back by several months? To answer the second question first... um... hopefully not? How? That's related to the first question. In 'good-ol' Super Mario 3D Land fashion, all of these stages will be remixed versions of stages from the regular game but incorporating new paths, hazards and challenges. Being aimed at the most hardcore players also means that I won't have to rely on as much new user testing to tune their difficulty, allowing me to rely much more on my own experience and that of my more seasoned testers. All of this should make the Special World Stages much faster to produce than fresh new ones. These stages will really be aimed at players looking for a greater challenge!

And with that, I say bye bye for now. I'm off to try and tackle some weird bugs I've been having with controller support in the menus. See you all next week!