Babble

Spent a long time today working out an outline for The Chained Sky characters. I'm not working as fast as I'd hoped, but at least, I've got some work done today. I actually planned to finish detailed story backgrounds for 19 RPG characters, all with intriguing pasts, within one day. I guess it is a little insane after all. :P I'm starting to get the hang of this "superfast" work rate though - complete with schedules, extensive to-do lists, the use of an online team project organizer, periodic phone calls and deadlines to meet.

A little hectic, but before you know it, a full game emerges right before your very eyes. Nine game projects in 2 years. I hope I can make it. XD

Now… to go even faster… :D

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Development

I was unsatisfied with the strategy involved in facing the new Nanomachine units, so I spent today testing, retesting and tweaking their stats. I intended Lymphocyte units to be most effective against them, but not without the help of other complementary units. I think I got it just about right now.

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Design

I finally started on designing the levels for the game. I actually spent several hours sketching out plans and making lists of strategic possibilities. I definitely kept demo feedbacks in mind and I'm dedicating at least 6 levels as "introductory levels" (not including tutorial levels). I think I went a little too far on the technical aspect, sketching out 4-5 graphs and aligning difficulty and learning curves, but this structured approach allows you to come up with a full level outline for the entire game within a very short amount of time.

Anyway, the final game will probably consist of about 27 levels, give or take a few.

Some levels are very difficult to beat unless you learn a trick, so I'll make sure to hint or instruct players about those. These hints should become more subtle as you progress through the game, but they'll be there.

Originally, I want the last 4 levels of the game to be incredibly hard, but considering that GM communities are full of 14-year-olds (I almost forgot), I guess I'll have to dampen that down. Either that, or I'll have to make the difficulty curve real smooth.