Hello there, again,
Skippy's Grand Escape (SGE) is a rather straight forward game: Find the exit and get there as fast as possible.
To make this concept a little bit more interesting, there are various obstacles in your way: Enemies, traps, and some other mechanics revealed later in the game.
To better deal with these obstacles, there was a plan to have 3 active skills pretty much from the beginning: Freeze Nova to get past enemies. The Tactical Beacon to minimize backtracking (Thanks @Troik for this great idea!) and Active Sensor Pulse that gives you some more information about your surroundings, thereby decreasing the need for trial and error.
A whole skill system sounded WAY too ambitious and frightening in the beginning, and I told myself that it would make SGE too complicated anyways, as it is supposed to be a simple game.
Having learned A LOT in the last couple of months, a skill system sounded increasingly feasible and just too much fun to not go for it (or maybe I’m just trying to justify the feature creep at this point…).
Anyways, now we have around 16 skills split in 3 categories (Defensive, Offensive and Utility) with an informative selection screen that is shown whenever you start a level from the overworld. You’ll start with a small selection of skills and unlock new skills after each sector (6 levels each).
Here are some impressions, though they look a lot better in motion:
Gives the game some tactical depth
More options to survive in hardcore mode
More options to get faster times
Encourages experimentation on which skill combination could lead to the fastest times for each level, thereby increasing replayability of all levels
Each skill is a little fun project in itself, as it requires:
Coding game logic
Visual effects / graphics design
Animations
Sound effects
Level changes to make the new skill fit – or at least not break the level
A new icon
Maybe achievements utilizing this skill
Example screenshots/videos and data (active time, cooldown time, range, etc.)
Not only more gameplay variety and mechanics to play with, but also quite a lot of visual variety
Times are comparable only in the context of the skills used now. Leaderboards will display the skills used next to each player’s time to offer exactly this context.
Depending on how you look at it, it might be demotivating that players probably cannot achieve the best times on the leaderboards on their first playthrough. They must revisit levels with skills that they’ve unlocked later in the game. OR, from a different viewpoint, players might enjoy the replayability and experimentation
Increased complexity. Given the fact that the game itself is quite simple, this should not be an issue for most players, though.
Opens a huge entry point for bugs and game/level breaking mechanics
To stay consistent I’ve underestimated the required effort quite a lot again :-D Like with the new overworld design, the skill system too felt like I’d have to touch and adjust the whole game: Savegame handling, leaderboards, options menu, the tutorial, achievements, a new selection menu, a progression system, the HUD,… even the Pause menu as it shows stats for each skill. Everything needs to accommodate the new system.
The work on the skill system was a bit overwhelming and tedious at times. But then again, each skill was so much fun to think about and implement - and it makes the game so much more interesting, that the effort felt well worth it.
What’s your thoughts on the new skill system?
Inv1s1ble