For Destruction Darius 1 I had batches of 4 levels that you had to beat in order before
you got a highscore. That’s fine, until you find one level that you can’t complete.
We’ve all had memories of this in games. What do you do? You replay it a few times,
get frustrated, then quit the game, never to play it again. I sort of got around this
problem by letting players choose any 4-level campaign that they wanted from the main menu.
But it doesn’t exactly make it feel like a proper single player game then, does it?
So for Destruction Darius 2 I created a world map, full of islands that you hop between
until you beat the game itself. More islands become available as you beat the earlier ones.
Each island is full of about a dozen levels, connected by a maze of paths. I’m HOPING
that this will appeal to any type of gamer, regardless of their ability or gaming style.
Say you’re an experienced gamer who just wants to just say you’ve beaten Destruction
Darius 2. Since you’re the type of gamer who gets bored quickly, you want to blaze
through the dozen or so islands as quickly as you can so that the difficulty goes up
and you can see all of the challenges that this game has to offer. If you plan out your
route then you’ll only have to play about 4 from each island, before carrying on your
way. Easy. Within about 50 levels you can get the ‘CONGRATULATIONS YOU WIN’ screen
and quit the game, carrying on with your life or whatever.
Say you’re a noob. Somebody who struggles with the game, but who really wants to reach
the end. I love players with this combination of low skill and high determination. They
want to play it like that seasoned gamer I just mentioned… but they often get stuck
on a certain level. Rather than lose at it over and over again until they burn themselves
out, they can instead find another path to bypass that bit of the island and to carry
on their way. But say this doesn’t work either! Say they get stuck on an island and
can’t beat it! That sucks. Luckily, they can still move on to the next island by paying
a one-off fee of £5.99 on the steam store for… just kidding. No DLC in this game.
Every level you beat gives you coins. Gather enough of these coins on the levels and islands
that you CAN beat, and you can bypass a problem island by unlocking the next, allowing you
to carry on your way. Each island will feature dead ends full of
even more optional levels. These are here for people who just really enjoy playing the
game, but also let struggling players ‘grind’ to earn more coins to unlock later islands.
Every level you beat gives you 5 extra coins. Achieving a bronze score gives you 7, silver
gives you 9 and gold will give you 10. Getting to the end of an island unlocks speedrun and
destruction modes which will give you up to 50 coins depending on your time taken. In
other words, there’s a lot to be had from replaying islands you’ve already beaten.
And the game doesn’t just get harder and harder. Instead, islands come in groups of
2, the first introducing a new block type, full of easier tutorial-like levels, and with
the second being full of more challenging levels based around that block type. So even
if you’re struggling with a particular island, it’s still worth bypassing it for a later
one, as rather than harder it might merely be different, with new block types that are
perhaps more your style of play. And what if you’re the hardcore gamer. The
sort who wants to beat the whole game? You don’t just beat an island. You beat every
level on the island, and aim for a highscore on each of them. Gold scores on each aren’t
enough. There’s also a Diamond score, which will be my best time on each. Beating this
doesn’t reward you with anything other than the satisfaction of knowing that you’re
better than me at my own game. It also makes the flag for that level turn BLUE, rather
than gold. But… who bothers to play the game like this? Well, I was rather surprised
to find that all of my housemates ended up being like this. Apparently beating me at
my own game is more fun for them than the game itself. They were on the beginner islands
for a good hour or so. And had wayyyyy too much success in beating my times, so clearly
I need to brush up on my skills a bit before the game’s release.
But any way. You beat all of the levels AND the game itself. You want more! I’m hoping
to have several super hard islands beyond the ‘final level’. These will be butt-clenchingly
hard. Unforgiving, unfair, a true challenge even for ME. The sort of levels that would
stop most people from beating the game, so instead they’re hidden away in the furthest
and most terrifying islands that Destruction Darius 2 has to offer. But they’re there,
just in case. And I haven’t even mentioned the online
highscores. Each island will have 2 of these; one for Destruction and one for Speedrun.
I didn’t bother having highscores for individual levels since they’re way too easy to perfect,
but consistently getting great times across an island and about 4 or 5 levels in a row
is much harder. You’ll have to decide between shorter harder levels, and slightly longer
ones where it’s easier to get a consistently good time. And so on. I’m expecting the
competition on these leaderboards to be intense. That’s where knowing my personal best, diamond
times for each level comes in; to show if you’re on track towards a score worthy of
the online competition. With Destruction Darius 1, this was quite a large part of the game.
With Destruction Darius 2 I still want it to be that for some players, but also want
it to function like a single player game for those who don’t like such stressful online
rivalry. Like me. All this, of course, depends on having fun
levels and balancing the islands and coin system just right. There’s no magic formula
I’ve found for doing this- I just aim to playtest it all. A lot. I hoped I’d enjoy
making them, but I don’t. It’s only when I play them that I discover which are fun
and which require work… and which should be deleted completely. Along the way I discover
new ways to use existing blocks, or cool ways that they interact with others to make for
a fun experience. I continue making, playing and deleting levels
until I’m left with the best, then I put the easier ones along the main routes and
leave the harder or more experimental ones around the outskirts of the island, and then
begin playing through the islands over and over again, mixing around the order of the
levels. At the moment it’s just to ensure that people won’t get stuck at a particular
point. But later on I hope to control the type of gameplay that only speedrunners will
notice and appreciate. Though speedrunning often takes care of that in itself. It’s
a weird thing. And then, of course, I have to balance how
many coins are required to unlock each island. It has to work for every type of player, whether
they’re rushing through the main levels or are taking the time to beat more. Did they
bother beating the tutorial levels? What if they speedran the first few islands and it
makes unlocking the last ones too easy? This is actually the thing I think will be the
hardest to get right. But I am very pleased with the coin and medal
systems. It’s hard to accommodate for all types of players, at all skill levels. Bronze
and diamond times are hard enough, let alone those in between. But this once again comes
with playtesting and I think this rating system adds just as much gameplay as does the multi-path
island layout. I hope you can see that there’s a lot more
thought being put into this than me simply generating hundreds of levels and calling
it a game. Admittedly in my past games I haven’t put anywhere near as much thought into this,
but then again in my past games there wasn’t as much fun gameplay to be had from getting
this bit right. These videos are a bit of a risk for me since I’ve been talking about
what I hope to do, but there’s still a chance that I fall flat on my face with this game
and that this series will become a documentary on how NOT to make a game. I’m hopeful that
it’ll be a success, though. But you can’t always get it right. No matter
what I do, there will be people who ragequit early on, or who beat the game and complain
that it’s too easy. Or who rate it 1 star because there’s no unlockable weapon upgrades
or something. I don’t want to make it for everyone, only to alienate everybody in the
process! I guess that at the end of the day I just
want the game to be fun. That people enjoy playing, even if it’s just for an hour or
so. It’s not an MMO that requires hundreds of hours of grinding, or something that furthers
gaming graphics. I just want to finally finish a game that I can be proud of. As something
that showcases how much I’ve learned on my game making journey so far.