Picking the details

We are planning to submit Grapple Buggy to the Dream Build Play 2009 competition in August. Weapon of Choice won third place in last year's contest, so we're certainly hopeful of winning, but there's plenty of solid contenders already swirling about such as Elysian Tail: Dust and Duality ZF.

While Grapple Buggy is far from complete we'll be submitting a subsection of the final game. This will include a full story with multiple endings, lots of enemies and bosses, and all the Mommy's Best fixin's such disgusting aliens and their viscera.


There's only a few weeks left which presents some interesting polish(not Polish) challenges. On what details do we focus now and what do we decide to fix after the contest submission? Sure all these things will be made great by the time the game ships, but we have to sculpt an amazing game now.

One example came about recently between the TrailFly and the LoogeySnare, two examples of the xenofauna within the game. Both need some extra polish, but there won't be time to commit before the contest to address everything. The LoogeySnare is a 'flavor' enemy for later in the game. His attack is currently too powerful and needs some serious time to rebalance a fight with him.

The TrailFly is nearly ubiquitous enemy which inhabits all sorts of caves and passes on VALD-END 317. The work required to improve him centers around making him attack more often, making his attack more obvious, and then rebalancing his flocking behavior to counter-balance the new attack.

I generally consider how often the player will encounter the gameplay and how long it takes to implement as most important. Sure it's probably more fun and cooler to fix the LoogeySnare, but he's encountered much less frequently. The changes to the TrailFly will be seen by the player constantly, and the improvement, while small will cumulatively pay off the most.

When it comes to gameplay optimization and polish, if there's a timeline, I balance ease of implementation with the impact of the change. And I almost always pick how frequently the player encounters the change as the motivating factor when picking which details on which to focus for a deadline.