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NorthernBoreus

[Dev Log] Great Play, Dad!

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Hey all!

I've started work on a tiny Wizard Jam game with the title "Great Play, Dad!" The back-of-the-box summary is this:

 

Impress your kids by putting on the theatrical experience of a lifetime! Unfortunately, it looks like the rest of the stage crew called in sick, so you'll have to work hard if you want to hear "Great Play, Dad!" when the curtain falls!

 

The game will be a single-screen 2D platformer where you play as the only member of a theater's stage crew who showed up for work today. You'll have to perform all the various tasks of the crew: running the sound board, operating the spotlight, changing out scenery, etc.  This will be done by running around backstage and on the catwalk and interacting with different stations, responding to prompts coming from the stage (for example: an actor saying "He's got a gun!" will require the player to run to the soundboard and select the "Gunshot" sound effect).  Each job will have a small minigame-esque task the player will have to perform in response to each particular prompt. As the play goes on, the prompts will start occurring with more frequency and the player will have to run around to get to them in time or else be penalized (likely with boos from the audience).

 

I'm hoping to go for a Cook, Serve, Delicious kind of increasingly-frantic vibe, with a control system similar to Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.

 

As of now, I've got a simple platformer up and running, using Unity's built-in 2D Platformer assets with some tweaks made to allow for things like ladder-climbing.  I've got placeholder sprites in for the backstage environment and the soundboard, and I've set up the scripting for the soundboard interface.  I'm in the middle of setting up a GameController to manage when prompts appear, the player's score, ending the game, etc.  Hopefully soon I'll have a vertical slice with all of the game's basic functionality, and I'll be able to add more prompts and tasks as time allows.

 

I've had trouble in the past leaving projects unfinished, since I try to make everything perfect as I go and try to do everything myself.  I'm making an effort to organize this project into discrete tasks that allow for multiple iterations, so I don't get bogged down with one aspect for too long.  I'm also forcing myself to use things like Unity's 2D Platformer package rather than making all of that from scratch, which is what I've tried to do in past projects.  I have to keep telling myself that it's better to finish an imperfect game than to give up on a perfect one.

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