For the past days I've been working on different difficulties for our game, difficulty as in different kinds of levels. Starting off we made sure that we had a base game to play and after we had a player ship that could move and shoot we added enemies who could do the same and spawn objects where they appeared from. This led to grant m
e the ability to change details like spawn frequency of the enemies, in which order they appear and how frequent they shoot. Really good functions for balancing. I spent the mentioned last few days setting up a copy of our project where i could add, delete spawns and change how they worked, thanks to this I've come to a point where i managed to create a fair but not boringly easy basic difficulty and i'm experimenting with making more challenging experiences for the player, this of course will come with some external play-testing since naturally i would have a greater understanding about the game and therefore an easier time beating it.
So, what would an example of the difference between easy and medium difficulty be? Well the way I've done it was with the basic version of 3 spawns which means 3 enemy ships spawning on different lanes in a slow frequency and uneven order. It was not a challenge for anyone in the group to beat. However when i made a version with 5 spawns and slightly faster spawn frequency it actually required considerable effort to beat, that with regards to the fact that i made it and should have an easier time in general than most players. Going forward from this i will have people outside of our group test these prototypes of difficulties to make sure it contains the right amount of challenge warranting if its easy or medium. If this process goes well i can include the hard difficulty as well which is the third and final level version we have planned on as a group so far.
Hi Thomas,
SvaraRaderaIt was a pleasure reading your material and I have some aspects that I would like to know more about. First and foremost, what is your game called? Secondly, I would like some information on what the game is about. I for instance ask myself; what are you? What do I do as a player? What is my goal in the game? This lack of information carries over to your intriguing picture which I want to know more about as well. Because without any explanation I would interpret it as a USB flash drive fighting duplicates of the Rod of Asclepius. By adding this information, it would be easier and even more interesting to follow your design discussion.
With that said, I found it interesting to read about your efforts in balancing your game. Because of that, I would also have liked to have a background description of your and your team's thoughts and visions on how the difficulty is supposed to be. Being able to read about your thoughts on the subject would provide me with a clearer picture of your ambition. It would also give me a better insight into what you're trying to achieve in the long run.
It is great to hear that you are experimenting with having different difficulties as opposed to one. Is this because you want the game to be as accessible as possible and therefore expand the player base in the process or is it because of some other reason? This ties into what I said earlier about wanting to know more about your stance on the difficulty topic. Since you also want a third difficulty level I find it valuable and of interest to know why you want it. Could it simply be to increase the longevity of the game?
Before I conclude my feedback, I have one final input to make. Overall I appreciated your reflection on the balancing process and in accordance to what I previously pointed out I would only have liked more details. For example, how and what did you do with the projectiles and did you experiment with character size? All of this would've been of interest to read in your discussion regarding difficulty.
In conclusion, I thank you for a pleasant read and I look forward to reading your future updates. In the meantime, I wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.
Sincerely,
Ted Fristedt