Soulsoup is an Adventure Puzzle game project I’m making in my free time, wearing the designer, coder and artist hats. I’ve challenged myself in completing it in 12 weeks. The following post is an update on it’s development.
Hi Everyone! Fourth week of Soulsoup development is already behind us, here’s a quick update on what has been done this week.
Level Selection
When reviving the project on week 1, I found a functional and super useful level selection screen. It’s a classic mobile type menu showing at a glance your ranking (how many stars you got) for each level. It does the job but it’s not exactly what I want…it’s dry.
I did a quick pass at integrating a level selection system from another project. What is shown below is far from the final result obviously but it’s closer to what I want in the end product. Travelling through various nodes that have distinctive visuals and specific names will, hopefully, give the sense of voyaging around the world.
Gameflow
I had some sort of epiphany. I had trouble making the two different modes coherent in the same world. They were also difficult to work with as everything in the engine was specific to either one mode or the other. Well the answer is quite simple. Both modes are to be integrated in the same gameflow, feeding each other to create a whole experience. The brilliant thing is that by merging them together, I end up with a simpler game to create, as in: 1+1 = 0.8. Yep, weird mathemagics.
Integrating this flow is my first task next week. I want to have the full loop in and ready for the next playtests.
Getting Some Visibility
I’m also spending some time setting up a proper website, an entry in indie DB and things like that. Better communication with the community can only be good. I am mainly using twitter for communication but I feel like I’ll need to make more effort in order to reach more people. More on that later.
Setting up a website is more complicated than I thought. I’ve never been the best with too many choices. I prefer limitations ;).
Other Updates
- A tally screen at the end of a puzzle has been added. It shows how well the player did, his progress and some options (continue, retry).
- More work has been done on sketching the ingredients and finding the right recipes.
Thank you for reading and taking interest in my project! Don’t hesitate to reach me at any of the following for a chat:
Have fun!
-Dave
The Bosstopus 