I still haven’t put together a time lapse; I’ve been busy playing and rating. But I still want to write a post mortem to elaborate on my goals and express what I feel I accomplished.

Within an hour and a half of the beginning of the compo, I settled on the “caterpillar lifecycle” concept:

The goal was to create experientially different moments of play during the different phases of your caterpillar life. As the design sheet above depicts, an important early thought was creating a sense of freedom and openness when the player emerges as a butterfly. This was accomplished by providing wildly different controls after the player emerges from a cocoon.

(The player is immobile as a cocoon, but has the freedom to move the camera — something they couldn’t do as a Pillar. Being given a brief opportunity to scout the map is useful, and it serves as a cue for the player to make the control shift more intuitive.)

The loop was complete, and roughly balanced so that total population was dependent on player actions. Neat.

I hang out in the IRC chat for a few before some kind soul yells at me, “SLEEP!”

I wake up early and tweak a few things, then get to planning the next sprint.

This basic life-cycle was SO successful in providing experientially unique moments of play, that I implemented alternate forms in the next sprint:

I didn’t know exactly what these other forms would do yet. I just gave them names and drew them to help spur creative thought. During implementation, they changed a million times before I settled on these three:

Agrobug: eats other bugs, leaves a trail of food behind it when moving quickly (clicking). Emergently attracts other bugs, creating food (eggs, cocoons, etc) for itself. Playing the agrobug feels pragmatic. You’re constantly moving forward, but turning requires you to click (and drop food). Spamming his movement causes him to revert to a cocoon, so motion is deliberate and calculate.

Fastbug (Zipper): fast-moving egg-collector that can morph at will. Useful for when there is a bunch of food around, but also a large number of competing insects. Like the Butters, he is fast, but his controls aren’t very friendly unless you remain in constant motion. Controlling the Fastbug feels restless. Almost agitating.

Fatbug: An inedible, egg layer. He’s ridiculously slow and his controls are unwieldy, making him a pain to play, but that’s okay! This discourages players from using him prematurely, as his only real system utility is saving the player from loss conditions (no mates, about to be eaten, etc…).

It’s about this point that I really started to feel the theme. Morphing completely changes the “feel” of the game, despite the fact that the underlying ecosystem remains the same. Player actions affect the distribution of bug populations.

It’s getting complex.

Before taking a fairly long break, I time-block the last day of development with three major goals in mind:

1. create “levels” to introduce the complex game mechanics,
2. provide a sense of progression in the existing “endless” mode,
3. improve art and add sound.

Aaaaand…go!

I wrote up a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish (“Become a buttefly”, “Last 3 generations”, etc) and started writing level controllers like a madman. I made a simple helper message to provide context for the player: “You want to be butterfly.”

Then something beautiful happened.

In the minimalist environment of the game, with few other cues, this simple message was hauntingly engaging. I trusted it. It told me how I felt. Why should I question it?

A large part of my motivation so far had been attempting to control the player’s emotional response to mechanical changes. This form of exposition had unbelievable synergy, and I ran with this for hours. Helper messages got simpler, more bug-like in perception. Simultaneously simple and open ended, they spurred thought. Mood became everything, and story mode emerged.

But there’s still time for more!

Mutation Mode (Progression via Adaptations)

4 hours left. No time to think. I know what I want to accomplish. I don’t have time to question plans. I create a data object to hold names and descriptions of various mutations and begin writing what they do before lifting a finger to actually implement them. I’m sure this will be my downfall.

3 mutations to unlock the alternative morphs, 3 cool down reduction mutations, 5 speed boost mutations, and 10 “unique” mutations (2 for each bug). Here’s a sample of some of the ambitious mutations I chose to throw at myself:

– “Grabbing Claws — grab eggs [as the Butter] and carry them while holding the LMB!”
– “Explosion Pouch — when the fatbug dies, it blows anything nearby into tasty bits!”

Believe it or not, I managed to implement all of these (and visualize the mutation when hovering over an heir) with an hour to spare. My old friend crunch, he’s good to me.

Alas, I’m behind schedule. I anticipated having 4 hours to spare at the end to polish graphics and add audio, but there’s only an hour left. I open up illustrator and begin frantically replacing all of the art assets — all 7 sprites. 😛

Before visual update.

After visual update.

Done.

10 minutes to spare. Polish. Tweak helper messages. Panic. Merge control objects for level 1 and 2 to make it a single, longer level. Find bug. Panic. Fix.

TIME!

Finished product: