The bulk of the remaining work on Escape Goat is level design. Here are the goals:
- Player needs to get the first two items within five minutes, making the first region about 3 minutes total.
- Player needs to learn the play mechanics for both the goat and the mouse.
- There are 18 gadget types. They all need to be featured in puzzles, but they need to be demonstrated to the player beforehand. I’m hoping to avoid using text unless there is really no alternative.
- Rooms need to provide a range of difficulty, so you don’t have a string of consecutive easy or hard rooms.
- Rooms need to provide challenges for both platforming and puzzling. Platforming levels feature precise timing, and puzzling levels are more low-key and can be slower paced.
The current state of the game is a random collection of rooms that need to be placed in order. I added a cut-and-paste feature in my editor, so it’s easy to move rooms around, even from one level to another.
A couple days ago I came up with new gadget ideas. I allowed myself an hour this morning to program the first one: a floating bubble that keeps inertia and gets pushed to the edge of the wall. I figured it could be used to make Sokoban-style puzzles where you have to pick the right order and direction of blocks to push.
I got it working, then put together a level featuring the new gadget, and then decided it’s best to scrap it. The game doesn’t need more gadgets. A new feature means something else I have to train the player on. And with 18 working gadgets already, there are endless combinations I can use.
I’m glad I took the time to explore it, because maybe it would have been groundbreaking and awesome–you never know with these things. And it was only an hour. I’m also glad I’m willing to let it go. And after this exercise, I really know now that nothing more needs to be added.
