WIP – The Bosstopus

Soulsoup is an Adventure Puzzle game project I’m making in my free time, wearing the designer’s, coder’s and artist’s hats. I’ve challenged myself in completing it in 12 weeks using Gamemaker. The following post is an update on it’s development.

Hi Everyone! Not much and a lot happened on Soulsoup this week. Here’s a quick update on the 5th week of development…approaching half way!

Problems, Prototypes & Doubts

I haven’t posted a lot of art or finished screens or even proper gameplay yet and there’s a reason. I’m still figuring out all the parts and components of the game and there is absolutely no reason why I should art up things I’ll end up not using.

While building some mechanics, I found that they didn’t fit perfectly with the rest and had to either redesign, cut or make concession about the integrity of these problematic features. It’s a tough thing to do, when you really like 2 ideas but they are contradictory. Like choosing which one of your twin will die. Ok…maybe not that rough.

This is especially troublesome when you’re on a time limit. Struggling for too long on something that will get cut can be perceived as loss of time and affect morale. But really, it’s part of the process. Even when working on big titles, we end up removing features that are complete or almost complete near the end of the production because they can be hurtful to the final product.

With redesign though comes uncertainty and doubt that always seems to show up at the worst moment. This week I ended up cutting, reshuffling and prototyping a lot of different control schemes. I made very little noticeable progress even though a lot of work have been put in. The good news is that I’m close to having all the main components fit in a presentable way. Enough for a round 2 of play tests which should begin tonight!

Still rough around the edges but the core is there.

Dead by Daylight

I also want to mention that we finally announced Dead by Daylight the game I’m currently working on in my professional life :). It’s an asymmetric multiplayer game in which one crazed killer attempts to catch 4 survivors before they escape his nightmarish world.