This month has started fairly well. While I’m still finding the move to Gamemaker rather annoying at times, I’ve made some decent progress and my comfort level is improving.
The game is still very much a prototype but I’m liking what it is becoming. The idea was inspired in part by a Warioland 2 level in which the player had to charge through the walls, roof and floor around them to move between rooms. Also serving as inspiration is a Mario Party 5 mini game where you race to be the first to ground pound through all the blocks.
Out of this comes the basic idea for my game – a randomly generated area that the player can destroy in all directions. Destruction will reveal collectables, enemies and upgrades for their miner. Their goal is to reach a set position before the time runs out. I want the game to be pick up and play with plenty of juicy extras to keep the gameplay interesting.
My focus has been getting the player movement and actions feeling as slick as possible. For the first week I worked towards getting the basics up and running; platformer movement and destruction.
This past week, I’ve been working on tightening things up as much as possible; getting destruction in all directions working pretty well and getting the controls more responsive. I also added some simple animations to give a bit of an idea of where I might go art-wise.
For the rest of the month I’ll be working on the actual game loop, essentially, giving the player a goal with success and failure conditions.