Whole-game devlog

*This was supposed to be a Youtube devlog which we never published, but here's the script

So a few months ago, I was really addicted to this one game, blockdoku. I really couldn't put it down, and had to uninstall it because it was taking 90% of my screen time. But what made this game so good and addicting, that our last game, Shotgap, didn't have? After analising it further, it all came down to 3 things:

1. Slow paced; the game needs to be slow, so you don't really need to put all your effort in it at all times. This allows you to play your game with your brain off and playing it while multitasking, for example while watching tv. ShotGap was really fast paced, meaning that slowing down for as little as a second could've resulted in death.
2. It needs to be fair and easy; this one is pretty straightforward, the game needs to be polished enough to always give you a chance even when the situation gets bad. It also needs to have a simple concept so that anyone could pick up the game instantly.
3. It doesn't need to be too eye-catching; colorful graphics, catchy music, I think it all makes a game more game-y, but it also makes it more embarrassing to play in public, and it also requires more attention, leading back to point n. 1
Now, with all these points in mind, we can craft a concept. What I thought of was a wave based game, where you had to stand still and just aim for the enemies, with a simple art style and breaks in between waves.

So we jumped into godot and made this pistol which follows the mouse cursor, gave it a laser so you can see where you are aiming, and made it shoot bullets. We then added this "base", which was the enemies' target and the place you have to protect to not lose your hp. And finally we added the enemies, with some customizable variables so we could make a few types of them easily. There's the:
Regular one: he's got normal hp, normal speed and normal damage.
The small one: he has less hp, but he's really fast and deals a lot of damage
The big one: has a lot of hp and does tons of damage as well, but is really slow.

Now that we had the enemies, we just made a wave spawning code and got the main game loop out of the way. Actually, we're not done, because in order to make this game loop satisfying, we had to give it the *juice*. So we simply gave the pistol shot a screen shake, a flash and a vibration. It may not look like much, but it makes a lot of difference, making the game, as basic as it is, already addicting.

Now, there's only 2 things we need to make the game balanced and punish the player, or else there wouldn't be a challenge thus making the game boring. So we first actually made the game possible to lose by making you die after taking damage, and as a general rule we imposed to this game, we made the UI as clean as possible, so there won't be any number symbolizing your health. And then we wanted to limit the ammo of the pistol, but not in a simple way. See, giving it an ammo counter and calling it a day was just boring. So instead, we made a skill-based reload system that didn't punish novices too much but rewarded whoever tried to master it. It's inspired by gears of war, and you basically have to time these circles and by doing so the weapon reloads instantly.


All that's left now is some polish and progression. Let's handle the polish first: we put these large numbers indicating the wave number and the kills, made the pistol glow when the next wave was ready, made a pause menu, options and a death screen.
Finally we finished it off of by implementing a save system (configfile saves lives).

To give some goals to the player to make it engaged, we added a shop. It includes upgrades, which are danage, ammo and health. We even added different guns to diversify the gameplay and themes to change the look of the game (featuring a cat mode :3). And finally we added a leaderboard to challenge other players.


PLAY STORE RELEASE
The game is basically done, and since we already paid our dev fee on Google Play Store we wont have to pay anything. We wanted to include ads, but we also didn't want to make the game annoying, so we gave the options to choose between banner ads and fullscreen ads. Furthermore, we added rewarded ads for an extra life, and we made a lucky wheel that ensures a free daily spin, but you can also spin it by watching an ad