Diary Entry #5: October 2019 – Early 2020
This post is all about the cool new stuff I added to the game after some great feedback from PAX.
The week after PAX, I did nothing. I spent time with my new family and took a well needed break from Bullshit. I had mixed feelings after PAX. I was incredibly happy with all the positive feedback, but felt like a complete amateur after seeing high quality games from other Indie devs. I realise now that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, and many Solo Indie Developers share the same thoughts and fears. Also, you have to start from somewhere.
After that week, I started on first the bug fixes and then the feedback. Some of the bugs were obvious, and funnily enough, it turns out that the people at PAX were brilliant play testers. (Thank you!)
Then came working through the feedback. There were some awesome ideas which I took on board, and others that I considered, but felt weren’t right for the game.
Some of the great ideas were different styles of play based on what various people consider to be their “House Rules”. I introduced two new modes. One to only allow one rank to be claimed each turn, and the other to be able to choose any rank each turn. Both styles were great as they mixed up the gameplay.
Another idea was to start removing cards after a while to increase the stakes and speed up gameplay. For this, I introduced a “Thief” to steal cards after a few rounds.
He’ll steal your cards, then your heart!
Someone suggested adding Lie, Truth and Shit streaks to reward you for certain behaviour. That was awesome so I added that to the game. I also added a score for extra incentive.
Another idea was a drinking mode, where a beer glass would appear on the side of the screen challenging you to drink when it was full. It would be filled up depending on the challenge set. I may still do this down the track, but I at the time didn’t want the game to be known as just a drinking game.
Then came the polishing. My wild cards were great, but not much visually happened when you used them. So most of the wild cards got a vfx upgrade:
stars
I added more animals. A rabbit, horse, hen and rooster. I gave the animals more sass and the ability to tell jokes.
The user interface got an update too. I added banners and new “jelly” style buttons.
The old flat button ugly interface
Jelly Buttons!
The jelly interface was applied to every screen. I also started to flesh out the various dialogs for single player, multiplayer and the game rules. The rules dialog allowed you create a “Custom Game” with your own set of house rules. I ditched this idea later on and instead decided that the single player mode should be a series of levels with a story.
The game was really starting to look good! It was all starting to come together! Then in early 2020 some serious shit happened! It wasn’t anything to do with Covid. I’m afraid next diary entry of this development blog is much more personal…
