Electrophage.com Website Review

In the over a year since the last blog post I've done very little development on From The Sun and a few months ago decided to stop work on it all together. As I built on the initial concept of playing as a particle of light that changes color and energy levels by absorbing other light or running into obstacles I realized that I didn't have a full plan for what the final game would look like. As an experiment and learning experience I consider it a success, but I don't see a larger appeal with it in its current encarnation so I'm taking what I've learned and am moving on to a new project. More about that to come. Taking on a solo project and exploring more of the aspects besides programming was really good for me. I gained a renewed appreciation for all that goes into a game. Chiefly among the aspects of game development that I had underestimated are design and production. I did no real design work going into development for this game. It started out as a little experiment with no player interaction where colored ba*ls spawned on a screen, redder colors on top falling down and bluer colors on the bottom floating up. When ba*ls collided the bluer one would become one step bluer and the redder ball would be destroyed. I then iterated on that design a few times until I reached the mechanics Once I was fairly happy with the game mechanics I started building out actual levels and a structure for the game. In that process is where I learned the value of planning the production beforehand in order to be able to plan a timeline for the game. I didn't have a timeline at any point in the development process. My docu*entation consisted of a trello board that I threw tasks in to as I thought of them and some pages in a notebook with ideas for what levels should be like. As a result of that a lot of little things in this game are completey flat and bland: menus, interface, sound effects, etc. I'd realize that one of those aspects needs attention, spend a little time on it, and then