Project Management Mind Dump

Hello!

So I haven't had a lot of mental energy or headspace to update this devlog since Narrascope... Part of that is how amazing everything was. Part of that is reflecting on the the excellent feedback I got from playtesters and fellow attendees. Another part of that is because I took a vacation with my family. And maybe the last part is hitting a bit of developmental exhaustion (and physical exhaustion from summer heat). But I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things this week and for the remainder of July.

To kickstart some of that energy, I thought it might be helpful to post a production roadmap rant to give myself a bit of space to reflect on what still needs to get done leading up to a big milestone at the end of the summer (more on that later). The first thing that I've been working on since Rochester is integrating what I've been calling the "conditional spinner" feature. After completing the first day, the player is prompted at the start of the following day (and every day following) with a spinner bath toy that contains a set of "overnight conditions." These "states" will affect the upcoming series of games based on how the night went. These conditions can affect the speed with which you stress, the amount of stress you can take before reaching a breaking point, skipping downtime, and other modifiers that add an element of randomness to each day-playthrough. 

I've already implemented most aspects of this feature, but I'm still working out some of the little bugs with assigning each condition correctly after the player "flicks" the spinner to get things in motion. There's also some polish I want to do and I need to create the lil' tutorial narration for this as well to introduce this mechanic. Eventually, I want to have these conditions appear in the upper right-hand corner with an icon. This condition can also be double-checked in your journal (more on that in a bit).

The next thing that I really want to work on is a "map of the day." Though a previous playtester mentioned this to me in a previous round of feedback, a couple of folks at Narrascope discussed how it'd be nice to see how the player is progressing during the day and to lay out what events/tasks might lay ahead. I 100% agree with this notion, and I think giving the player some sense of where they're at during the day would not only provide some additional feedback but also could add a layer of strategy. If the player knows, for instance, that they only have one more minigame to go before their next downtime, they could strategically think about how to get through that task without stressing out (using, say, an item???).

The implementation of this is still a bit shakey to me, since I haven't been necessarily preloading a set "seed" of minigames, but instead have been pulling the next minigame randomly from an array of potential games left from the full collection of possible games. However, I could see about reconfiguring this and creating a jumbled array at the beginning of the day that then populates a timetable or visual outline of what the player should look forward to. I don't QUITE know how I would visually display the day's proceedings, I have a loose idea of something similar to the Super Mario World overworld map, but again, I'd have to really think about how I want to implement this and be sure it doesn't interrupt the fast-paced flow of the game. I think making it snappy and (and I truly hate this term) "juicy" will add the flavor I'm looking for as well as some of the guidance that players are needing. One way that I've been thinking about this is through some slight-of-hand scene transitions similar to the shader example posted below. Some kind of "wipe" that transitions to the "map" and then transition out of that map when the next minigame is loaded. I worry that this process might be a bit tricky, and could potentially require a bit of a redesign of the current scene loading/unloading structure, but I'll experiment with this and see what I come up with.

The last big element is polishing up the journal segment and incorporating this into the game. I want the player to be able to check the journal during downtime to see how they're progressing and also possibly to show the player the different "achievements" they've made along the way. The journal will also contain more details about the current condition of the day (as outlined above) and hold a record of all their previous journal entries (which I want to game-ify slightly more to really push the player into interacting with the journal/self-reflection aspect of the game).

I'm mostly done with the general layout of the journal at the end of the day, but still need to work on how the journal looks and the UI interaction during downtime. I initially though trying to keep everything together in one centerfold would be enough, but I think I might also need to add an additional "tab" for the player's actual journaling. I can't tell how deep I want this journal interaction to be, since I don't think the player will be "using" it a ton, but I think it'd be important for the design for players to be able to access it outside of the end-of-day scene.

These are the three big things that are at front of mind for me, will update as I get through these and incorporate more aspects of the design polish that haven't quite made it into the build (including new minigames!).