Hello everyone,
Today has come the day I am ready to write a devlog. Devlog that will allow hikers to discover the game I've been working on for a few years, but also to collect your feedback on the few screenshots that illustrate this article.
It all started with a board game presented in Europe
It’s been a few years (I'm talking about the pre-pandemic era, yes) since I've been presenting the prototype of my board game that I'm trying to publish and finance. The rules are relatively simple: you play as a wizard, and you must place cards with various statistics (life, strength, defense) on a game board to reach your opponent.
To finance this project, I therefore decided to develop and sell a dematerialized solo version of this game, by developing the lore hidden in the cards.
Thus was born Drifter's Tales: a narrative board game that gives pride of place to storytelling and discovery. But today, we're going to focus on the major challenge inherent in this transformation: moving from a 2-4 day competitive game to a single-player game.
This game is a solo version - I had to adapt it
First challenge: how the enemies that the player will have to fight should behave? I tested a few variations, like having a different deck for each enemy (and believe me, it took a while) or having pre-determined patterns that repeat over and over.
It is this last proposition I chose. First, because the development would have been really tedious - like a real complexity nightmare - and then because the player must be able to end each fight in 5 minutes, and not in 30 minutes as the original game offers.
Thus, each enemy has from 2 to 5 moves available, which the player can anticipate using these icons at the top right of the screen:
So the enemy can place & move cards, play spells or use any kind of threat against you. Each threat can of course be thwarted with the right strategy.
The second challenge - and not the least - is about the readability. How to display the statistics of the cards on a large game board, while giving the possibility of having an overview on this same board?
At first, I had focused on a zoom function, but zooming in on the cards was detracting from the readability of the big picture. Then this zoom became optional, with pressing a key that would activate an “assistance” mode. But the tests were not conclusive, the player having to continuously activate and deactivate this mode.
A third option - and this is the one I chose - is to give the player the possibility to change their point of view, from the view of their hand to a view of the whole board:
Going further thanks to the video game medium
Freeing myself from the rules established by the paper game was really beneficial from a game design point of view. Thus, some enemies have movements that make the player interact directly, such as avoiding projectiles sent by the opponent:
Of course, I developed other interactions to change from a variation on the shoot 'em up: runes to draw with the keys of the keyboard or memorize a series of symbols.
I need testers for an alpha version
In order to properly test the game in alpha I need testers. Balancing the difficulty or even finding bugs is something tedious and counterproductive (as you can miss many things) when you are alone. Thus, I share a form where you can register for an alpha which will be released at the end of June here: https://forms.gle/hQg14wD97FPuS5T96
Thank you all for this long read, I hope it was instructive for you (if you are a solo dev like me) and that it made you want to know more!
And as we say around here: à plus dans le bus!