Is it Fun?

Like many indie developers I’ve seen Indie Game the Movie. In that movie the developer for the video game Fez asks the important question of “is my game good?” He was afraid he was focused so hard on making the game that he wasn’t sure if it was good anymore. I feel that way often at this point. I’m going to be doing a play through of the game to look for bugs and get some more screenshots for the Steam Capsule image. I’ve been looking at a lot of other games and I keep asking myself what makes these games fun or addictive and how I can leverage those things for my game.

Last week we added a button to allow the player to hide the combat UI the same way we’re doing during game play with the F5 button which will remain on release. I felt that players are going to want that option. It’s similar to what’s available in a lot of MMO’s when you want to take a nice screenshot.

I spent some time on my laptop working on character profiles. The general feel and purpose of the troops available to the player in game aren’t well defined well. We have not items in the game, and so the only thing we can give players are more troops or interesting troops. I may need to add items to the game when it’s in full release. There may not be enough options for players to feel like they are able to “play their own way.” That said if there are to many options then some players will likely feel overwhelmed. There’s a balance that needs to be struck. Another route we could go in is to make the characters have quality levels between 1-3 or 1-5. I’m not sure I like that idea but it would be an easy fix to add more quality levels for troops.

As I sit down and look forward to moving and starting my new job in Florida I’m thinking about my work area when I get there. I do have my desktop computer here with me but it’s not exactly the most conducive work area. I’m hoping I’ll get more work done when I’m there, but realistically I will have to keep choosing to get work done and pass up other things to finish. It’s so much easier to choose to slack off than to get work done. I need to focus and set aside time to work or I’ll never complete my goal and all my time will go to leisure. It will be important to have balance.

Most of my spare time this week went into closing on my house. It was very exciting as on Sunday night we didn’t see a lot of good options and then on Monday a very exciting house went on the market. I was lucky that my Mom was looking at houses with me as she was the one that spotted it. I looked at it and thought about it for about and hour or two. I contacted my realtor and secured a virtual walk through with her.

Things fell into place and I put a bid up on the house that day. I was lucky that I did as there were 2 other bids on the house that went in that day too. How lucky the sellers were to have so much interest so quickly! They had some more showings on Tuesday and late that night they decided to go with my bid. I was so relieved to finally have a home. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a place to belong where I truly felt was good enough for my family to live in. It did remind me of some past regrets too. I guess it’s been an emotional week.

The rest of the week was spent doing paperwork for the house, and trying to figure out timelines when I might be able to move. The way I’m looking at it the sooner I can close on the house the better. It will take some time to get my household shipment as well.