So Vacuum is out now (please play, and rate here https://ldj.am/$317397)

SATURDAY

Prototype

Unable to sleep, Rianna spend Friday night making a prototype of the combine harvester game in p5.js

Quite simple gameplay - use the left analogue stick to move your combine harvester (white circle), but use the right analogue stick to move your tractor (black circle), which must always be within range of the harvester. The aim is to collect all of the little white squares.

But this on its own was too simple - so she added little red enemies that, if touched, end the game. These enemies picked a random velocity every few seconds, making them feel a bit alive. Rianna got this idea from another prototype she has been working on.

Playtest

It is important when making any game to playtest! How your game feels is vital to the experience.

After getting a few friends to play it this rough prototype, they found that the dual control felt a bit "sticky" - that the independent control for each piece just wasn't enjoyable - they would often "get stuck" on the inside edge of the outer circle, and it just wasn't satisfying. Lots of strange quirks showed up, like players not using the left stick at all and just dragging themselves around inside the outer circle as it was faster.

Players don't know the "proper" way to play, and will very quickly pick apart early iterations of your game. This can be a bit disheartening, especially when you have already put so much work into getting the game working as-is, but it is just part of game development. You cannot tell the player that they aren't not enjoying themselves, it is up to you as the developer to ensure the players experience the game how you want them to experience it.

So we went back and refined the controls - putting less emphasis on the twin-stick controls, and giving the player a bit of momentum when moving around. After these relatively small changes, we were getting a lot more positivie feedback, and testers were enjoying playing the game.

Mockup

Dan saw the circles in the prototype and immediately thought "looks like planets hoovering up dust & gas" and so made this mockup. Little orbiting planetoids could act as little shields to protect the baby star accreted matter, and more would be added as you grew larger.

To get this effect, Dan used a gradient map in Photoshop on some Perlin noise to mimic the cloudy look of false-colour images of nebulae. Add some very minimal-looking planetoids & comets in over the top of the prototype circles and we had a look we were very happy with! We were glad the game had moved away from the intial visuals of farm equipment & fields of wheat, now it felt a bit more unique, and we got our name for the game:

vacuum

We had the general idea pretty much locked down, and spent the rest of the day refining the look and feel. The plan was to spend Sunday doing nothing but polish, polish, polish..