Game Title: My Way! Dev Blog #2

The challenges of introducing a brand new character and how it ties to the overall game(story and gameplay) that have been build up

What's the game about?

My Way! is a survial adventure visual novel beat em up game where you play as the muscle man where he don't want to be a muscle man anymore and encounter a mysterious voice who offer to grant him any wish he wants if he survived. The muscle man now goes on a journey on trying to figure out who he wants to be while killing any obstacles that stand before him. The player needs to survive the time limit where enemies will keep spawning until the time limit have reached 0. Not only that, the player need to punch certain amount of enemies in order to win. Only meeting thse 2 requirements, you're the victor for the first level and the player needs to select a door to go through and fufill that level requirement in order to win. However overcoming the challenges that the mysterious voice offered, and you've chooses what gender to become, are you truly free from the mysterious voice? Are you living in reality or a dream? Only overcoming one last challenge, the story is truly over.

MyWay! gameplay - Male route

MyWay! gameplay - Female route+Boss

Challenges while making the game

Implementing new movesets and the reason behind it.

Before the final build, I always thought that the 3 moveset that the player have which are attack, defend and jumping is enough. However, as new enemies getting introduced which of now have 4, without new moveset it would make the player easily overwhelmed and unmotivated to play the game based on playtest. Therefore,I finally decide to implement 3 new ability which are Air Kick attack, Jump down+ attack moveset and Stand on enemies.

a. Air Kick Attack

Reason: I noticed that when player jump and get closed to the flying enemies, they would always want to try to attack the enemy mid air but because I didn't implement they are force to lure them to the ground which can easily overwhelm the player if they don't clear the enemies in time. Eventually, many players simply did not want to jump and making the button useless. Therefore, air kick attack becomes a vital button to press in mid air now and player are now motivated to use the jump button.

b. Jump down + attack

Reason: Some players did complain about jumps are floaty or not high enough and serve no purpose in gameplay. Therefore, I tweak the jump to be intentionally more higher because of the newest jump down + attack moveset. Player can use this to quickly descend to the ground immediately and If player uses this moveset and land on top of the enemy it will damage the enemy. The intention is that player would equally rewarded while on ground and while on air depending on the situation and not feel they should always be on the ground for all the time to kill enemies. The other intention of granting player able to deal damage while come in contact with enemy while using the ability is to compensate player not being able to defend in air.

c. Stand on enemies

Reason: I noticed during playtest session that some players would always attempt to stand on top of the enemy and it cause the animation to stuck at jump animation. Therefore, in order to fix that problem, I make it that the player is able to jump on top of the enemy and encourage player to keep jumping to perform other moveset,

Narrative challenges

I think it's crucial on how to convinve people that both the female and male character are the same person because execute wrongly will definetly break the immersion of the player. Therefore, I think the most sensible way to tie the two characters is through dream. I think player can understand why they are two same characters because sometimes dreams are unpredicatable and sometimes forgettable, but sometimes they are impactful and unforgettable. Therefore it would make sense that challenges the player have overcome is nothing but a dream would make sense. And to make it more obvious is to have both playable character having same movesets.

Female route dialogue is similar to male route dialogue

Female route dialogue is similar to male route dialogue

However, I added a twist where the friend the player will encounter is the mysterious voice and once the player overcome the challenges, the mysterious voice will vanish and the player retain their current gender. Therefore giving an open ending on which is the real world is the player to guess.

Female playable character collisions

Male character and female character difference

The hardest part is introducing both character have the same moveset yet the size of the character is diiferent meaning different collisions. Male being short while Female being too tall. Therefore the position the character punches is produced differently. Therefore, the solution I came up with is creating a brand new enemy around middle height so the female playable character is able to hit the enemy in a short range.

Male character collision box

Female character collision box

Conclusion

Introducing a new character yet having the same moveset is challenging because of size differences therefore collision is really really important but thanks to the newest enemy being implemented just speicfic for female character, although not perfect but it fixes the problem at the very least. Not only that, one new character being implement changes the overall story flow therefore it's important to think about how your story is going to go in the planning to early stage.Lastly, don't underestimate that player might want more feature out of your game than you intially plan out, you might be surprised. Thank you for reading.