This is an archive, stream of consciousness style, devblog of my adventures trying to code up a game for the first time.

Today I remember lost feelings toward writing.

The story is written. I'm sure I'll do some major revisions as time passes, but for now it will stand as is. I'm still hinging on only 29 levels. It's hard to get an accurate measurement of how long the game will take from start to finish. I have to design and playtest each level so many times, that actually completing it takes almost no time at all. I have a small guideline of twice as long as it takes me to run through the level. Maybe this is too quick, but I think there should be enough content for what I'm aiming for. There has to be a balance between the difficulty of the levels and the playstyle. I don't want players to become too comfortable with one aspect of the game. I am striving to always push the player more and more. I also have to make sure that the levels and the story do not appear to be two distinct pieces, but rather a cohesive part of the whole. I can bang out a level in an hour or two, but making it look nice, and still serve my purpose is far more difficult. And as I advance into adding more and more gameplay elements, the level design is going to be trickier and trickier. As they say, always leave the player wanting more.

I didn't do anything else today, as I'm preparing to travel over the next couple days. I have lost this weekend and next weekend, so I hope I won't lose track of this game. I have a terrible track record when it comes to finishing things, but I hope that this blog and my goals for this game will help keep me focused. What's left? More of the same: level design, level design, level design. With only three gameplay elements left to code up, and two of those being relatively trivial, I need to make sure that I make the levels themselves as good as they can be. I am a bit concerned about the game not working for other people, as I have no other environments to test it in other than my own. I don't know if I want anyone playing it before I deem it "finished"…. Actually, I DON'T want people playing it until I deem it finished. I'm too attached to this project, and to have any impressions come back at all before I prepared myself for them would be devastating. I guess I'll just hope for the best.

For now I need get to sleep early. I was dreading writing the story, as I didn't want to have to put words to paper. And I didn't know if I could. There's a lot of room for improvement.