This is part of a 5 part Dev Log where I will be talking about the process I took through implementing 2nd Law, a short, adventure-style game about cause and effect. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/2nd-law

0 - Lessons | 1 - Design | 2 - Development | 3 - Music | 4 - Artwork

Brainstorming

When I begin brainstorming, I like to get all of the immediate and obvious ideas out of the way first. I know I will personally enjoy the outcome a lot more if I dig deep on the theme, even if I lose a little bit of the theme in the process. I decided I liked the idea of an unstable environment where interactions caused more and more "chaos" to emerge.

I originally pictured a sort of apocalyptic kind of state over 4 different scenes, but as the weekend dwindled I knew I need to reign in the scope and implement the bare minimum. Here's a design page that begins to show some of the scope I was trying to plan for.

What's in a game?

That's one exercise I started the week before the jam: trying to distill the concept of a "game" into a set of tenets that could guide my design: 1. The Objective - Must be clear and intuitive 2. The Mechanic - Must be easy to control and conducive to the objective 3. The Challenge - There should some sort of "additional dimensions" to the game that add a skill curve 4. The Feedback - The player should know if they are succeeding or failing

That's not to say that these are the only tenets of a "good game", or that their summaries are completely accurate or without exception. I'd be happy to engage in any kind of debate over them!

Underdelivering on any of those tenets can have damaging effects on the reception of your game. If your objective isn't clear, players might lose interest. If your mechanic (or any aspect of the game) is unpolished or is actually a barrier to the objective, players might get frustrated. The lack of a challenge is probably the safest tent to skip on, because a game being "too easy" would be a welcome critique if everything else is great :)

What did I learn?

Play testing and early feedback are important. I think my biggest mistake was knowing too much about the design of the game and not seeing it played with fresh eyes. * The trigger mechanic is a little finicky, which can increase frustration or make players lose interest pretty quickly. * The objective isn't super intuitive. This is probably where I struggle the most generally: communicating the objective. How to finish the game. I try to avoid stating it outright, because I'd like the design to do that for me. But then you run the risk of a player not understanding the "hidden message". * The feedback loop doesn't really happen until the end screen (which isn't obvious to get to, either), where the player learns what interactions meant. My hope was to encourage replays to find different paths through the interactions. That would have been more successful if I had had time to implement a more complex story.

What’s next?

I’m excited to talk about more aspects of my experience. If you’d like, please follow along!

• Development
• Music
• Artwork

- Hawkin