UPDATE 1

May 5, 2016

Seed of Life is a meditative puzzle action game in which you deflect colourful bullets to create sacred patterns.

Catch up on what the game is in this post.

This isn’t technically “update 1″, but since I’ve rebranded my game to Seed of Life (formerly known as Super Shield), I thought it fitting to start counting from scratch.

So - welcome to the first official development update for Seed of Life.

Here’s what took place and what I achieved on May the 4th.

DEMO Mode

This mode is intended for showcasing the game at meetups and conventions and such. If anybody stops playing for 10 seconds, an overlay with the controls is displayed while the AI takes over and plays by itself.

I find this a necessity now that I have it in place. It’s important for the game to be in motion and to look interesting and inviting at all times - particularly when nobody is playing it.

Auckland Game Developers Meetup (May)

I attended the May Auckland game developers meetup at AUT.

I caught up with many friends and fellow developers. It was a warm experience to see many of them and speak enthusiastically about various projects and going-ons.

I had a wonderfully long chat with Jerome, a friend and former colleague of mine, about the possibility space of the game.

I demoed the game on the show floor. There were some great people who tried the game - an overall positive experience. Screenshots from the play session were tweeted out directly from the game to my twitter, which you can browse through here (@EmotionTheory)

The Arcade / Idea Collective at the MOTAT

Made my first visit to The Arcade / Idea Collective at the MOTAT (Museum of Transport And Technology).

I had a very candid talk with Joe, the lead behind horror game Phantasmal. He gave some insight into his experiences and also provided some very helpful feedback for my pitching efforts with Seed of Life.

The workspace was great and the people are a great bunch to be around. I’m strongly considering making the trip over once a week, when possible.

Seed of Life store page feedback

I recently posted my Steam store page description for Seed of Life.

This was the first draft and was posted for feedback, which I had requested from a few of my game dev friends on twitter.

TIGSource

I began a development blog on TIGSource.

I’ll hopefully be posting to both TIGSource & Tumblr from here on.

Learning Outcomes

Pitching and General Feedback

Some feedback given by Joe for pitching Seed of Life:

Make specific references to games. For eg. Mini metro - success with niche market explosion, minimalism. Polybridge - success with gif sharing explosion + social sharing

Compare to market & projected sales - consider numbers for each demographics + percentage of people potentially interested (conversion rate) + real data of steam players, market numbers, platform numbers, tag and category numbers… etc



Promotion - some specificity (name specific streamers / YouTubers, etc)



Practice public speaking - communication, story-telling,



Write an overview / summary + conclusion at the end



Some additional feedback from other respected devs:

Stephen:

You probably don’t have to say/write “abstract minimalist” as the visuals show that really clearly. (ie, you can save a few words in your word count) The screenshots, in this case, do a great job of conveying the gameplay.



Not sure about the word “meditative”. Some people might find this offputting or interpret it as slow / dull. The elegant, minimalist elements are already obvious visually.

Chris:

I don’t think that most people will understand what you mean by shield. Paddle might be clearer.





Suggestion: Maybe something along the lines of “Deflected bullets light up the screen with the sky with dazzling patterns” would sound better. From what I’ve seen, intricate doesn’t seem like the right word.



Platforms - I think it would be better to target only a few at a time and to not list any platforms that you aren’t absolutely sure you’ll release on. That way you don’t disappoint anyone if you don’t release on that platform and you also have a separate ‘announce-able’ when you do.



Ken:

The compression on the gifs is a bit unfortunate. (Make sure they’re played at the original size and not blown up, or consider vines)





Elevator pitch has the words ‘action’ and 'bullet’… would be nice to avoid those if possible. It’s at odds with 'sacred’ and meditative’.





Suggestion: "The player is the protector of a sacred seed. Reflecting harmful elements creates a dance of light, a sacred pattern"



It’s good to suggest a story

Jordan

I like the new direction, before I think it felt a lot shallower than your other projects in terms of the concept but where you are headed now makes it seem like an Emotion Theory game. Has the new name inspired any big changes to the design? A thought I have is that it currently looks like laser light show more than it does something natural or energy like. The name coupled with the aesthetic makes me think of the life stream in ff7 or energy veins on a spiritual plane. If this is the case it would be cool to have more organic, spiralling, flowing, plant-like movements and imagery - a symptom of the old design to me is that it is very synthetic and trance-y. Not that it doesn’t fit only something to potentially keep in mind going forward. Have you thought about more diverse color palettes and background imagery? A minor promo comment is that a lot of screenshots together look quite samey when you don’t know he context and understand that these different designs also come with heavy gameplay implications.



Possibility Space

My discussion with Jerome lead to us exploring these points:

Having a striking opening sequence. When players first experience the game, they play through a very easy and simple wave that forms the titular Seed of Life pattern - after which the logo of the game displays, and cue the epic music.

A mode where projectiles can be directed left or right based on where on the paddle you deflect it. The objective would be to purposefully paint deliberate patterns that are dimmed on the screen. There could be a digital granularity on the paddle - 1 / 3 / 5 sections - where each section will direct it by a certain degree. The difficulty could be dialed right down to cater for this added level of complexity. Players might be content simply making their own patterns as they play the game - a Free Mode, which will also be what I’d use to explore level / pattern design.

which will also be what I’d use to explore level / pattern design. Having more sacred geometry inspired patterns. There could be geometrical components that form parts of a complicated image. These components can be turned on when bullets pass through them, making something like this sacred geometry image possible. This is a more complex idea which I might need to come back to later.

Playtesting

Some notes from playtesting:

Bring a controller next time

People were playing a test mode that literally fed them any of the thousand levels that were generated. Some were good, some were awful, and some were extremely difficult. A milestone I need to reach for next month: Curate levels by difficulty and get Zen mode working properly. An easy and endless “Free Mode” with no objective might be nice, too… (a *real* Zen mode)

An easy and endless “Free Mode” with no objective might be nice, too… (a *real* Zen mode) Figure out how to get audio to work through an HDMI cable on a Mac (embarrassed to admit this one, but I couldn’t get it to work)

Some positive notes:

People thought it was pretty, which was nice to hear.

DEMO Mode was brilliant for when people were initially passing by

I told players about the game tweeting the patterns they were getting, which got them to check out my twitter.

Conclusion

It was a great day, overall. I’m pumped to finish up my store page and pitch for Seed of Life as well as curate and make more and easier levels. There’s also a Free Mode I’d like to explore where players get an endless wave of easy projectiles they can manipulate with the way they hit it (middle, left, right of the paddle).

Links

Email: adam@emotiontheory.com



Facebook

Twitter: @EmotionTheory

Steam Group