Balancing Gravity

Problem: 

For Asterism, our team knew we wanted to create a space-themed game, and we eventually settled on a mechanic: gravity that affects bullets. The challenge, however, was how to implement this mechanic -- what should affect gravity and how? 

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Solution:

We had a couple of clear options to address this problem.

 

I suggested placing objects in the level that also had gravity, which would have created another variable to consider, "Where are my bullets going to go?", while also implementing our core mechanic. But this had some obvious issues that the other team members brought up, namely that bullets could essentially "die" after a while. After some degree of discussion, I conceded that there were better options. 

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The next obvious option was player-based gravity, proposed by our lead programmer. This option was the most viable because it presented a new layer of depth given that the player could effectively control how their bullets traversed -- moving left would cause the bullet to begin moving left as well. This also opened up more options for enemy design, an area I specialized in, allowing us to give a front-facing shield that the user could only bypass by shooting past the enemy and "pulling" the bullets towards them and hitting the enemy. 

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The challenge with this option was the player could essentially just spam LMB to shoot and never have any threat... even though tons of bullets were barreling toward them. So, we did the obvious thing given this was a bullet hell game jam: the player's bullets would damage them. This leveled up the idea by truly embracing the bullet hell aspect of this game jam, and solving our original problem. 

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Learnings: 

One of the biggest things I learned from this game jam was that rarely is the first idea the best idea -- the best designers understand when to concede and go with another idea. It's still a lesson I'm learning, but realizing that I don't have to be "right" or have the "best" ideas was truly an invaluable lesson. 

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