Week 1 Update (Indie Game Challenge)

Hey there! This post is part of an indie game project I made in August 2022. There’s a lot more ground to cover other than what’s covered in this post. So when you’re done reading, check out the full project here.

For the first week of the project, I decided to make an endless runner. I wanted to give players a sense of accomplishing something so I decided to make the goal to deliver as many pizzas as possible. And thus, Dough Boy Delivery began development.

The desired game elements

1. A wide variety of different procedurally generated obstacles including random interconnecting pathways
2. Collectable toppings that would add extra points upon delivering the pizza
3. Different game over endings dependent on how many pizzas were delivered

How it went

Development was riddled with bumps in the road. I did not have a clear enough vision of how the game would work from the get go. Nor did I have a proper schedule for myself. This resulted in a lot of lengthy revisions to the code and overall design.

I had the most difficulty trying to think of the interconnecting pathways. In a regular level, this would not have been a big deal. But in an endless runner where most things are procedurally generated, this required more time and thought than I had available. In the end, I settled for a very simplistic game where players would simply have to react quickly to obstacles thrown their way.

The next road bump that occurred was the challenge. With such simple gameplay, it was way too easy to survive.

Luckily, I devised a way to make the game harder and give even myself a challenge. I sped up the obstacles and increased their size to make players have to react more quickly. Furthermore, I reduced the jump height of the player character and increased his fall speed. This would make the obstacles require better timing in order to clear.

After that it was a matter of adding backgrounds and UI. I wanted to make the backgrounds scroll to give the illusion of movement but didn’t know how. Luckily, this was solved with a quick Google search.

What I learned

1. To have a clear vision of what I want the game to be from the very beginning
2. To stick to that vision in order to avoid time consuming revisions
3. To start with a very simple base gameplay concept
4. Add on extra details (like multiple endings) after making a solid game
5. How to make backgrounds scroll in Game Maker Studio 2

The game plan for next week

1. Start with a very simple and clear gameplay idea
2. Make a proper day by day schedule
3. Get the game functional ASAP
4. Fine tune the game
5. Add in the special details

This past week was tough but taught a lot of important lessons. Creating my first game has really boosted my confidence as a game developer.

Final product

Week 2 Sub-Update>