Meeting Notes 8 30 18 - GamesByMoonlight/Oh-No-Dragon-Edition GitHub Wiki

From DSoP Game Jam -

Improve correlation between dragon color and terrain color - red trees and dragon worked, blue water > blue dragon worked, rocks and pits had problems.

Certain elements broke "flow" - alternating terrain types too rapidly meant the player stopped moving, even though they were performing the proper input.

No payoff for selecting the correct dragon - people who seemed to succeed were the ones who chose a dragon, and a path that matched that dragon's type for as long as possible. Interacting with the game mechanic of switching dragons was almost the wrong way to play.

The game could use a power-up mechanic.

Background art was pixels, other art was smooth. Art style should be unified.

Game doesn't feel like it has a natural progression - it's either too hard to make it very far, or once you get into a groove, too easy.

Meeting 8/30/18 Responding to feedback

Discussed how to make air/earth dragons better correlate to their tile type. Decision - Add yellow spikes to the pit, add green bushes/moss to the rock.

Take some time to consider level design - start the early levels with an easy "flow", perhaps just a few tile types, or easy patterns. Then, higher levels have more complicated patterns. Decision - Make explicit levels, with an end point to each level. Make the earlier levels more straightforward, and perhaps speed up the mob in the later levels.

Improve rewards for alternating dragons and intentionally selecting a path, and power ups. Instead of the original idea of dragons having mana and there being a negative incentive to swap dragons (you can't progress, you're out of gas), we could say each time a dragon uses a power they gain mana (you can proceed with your current dragon, but swapping would be better for you). When all 4 dragon types have full mana, a kamehameha move becomes available that will clear a path. Levels could be designed with this in mind - let players destroy enough tiles so that all dragon types can get mana, then put a difficult section of terrain that would require a lot of switching so that they can either barge through it or blast it away. Also, when you have full mana on all dragons, there could be some sort of other bonus for keeping it - like extra points. The player can save their power wave for a better score, or use it for easier progress.