Planetary Planter is my college capstone game, where I am in charge of gameplay programming. It is an exploration focused farming game about harvesting celestial bodies and creating constellations that tell a story.
For the first few weeks of production following our four week pre production phase, we have transformed our vertical slice drastically into a more exploration focused platformer with elements of farming and completion similar to Stardew Valley's community center. I'm glad we decided to lean more into exploration and platforming since that's where the more complex systems are required, leading to more a more valuable experience for myself.
We're at the point where the final game is beginning to take shape. We can clearly see it for its merits and flaws at the current moment. Our current build has the foundations set well, but level design is still a work in progress, so we have lots of empty space right now. One of the make or break aspects of the game is definitely going to be the level design. As the game stands, completing the whole game isn't very fun due to the lack of change in the world. The big question on my mind is "Will the steady flow of upgrades to the player's exploration abilities be enough?".
Our testers are engaged when playing our game, but none of them have played for longer than 15 minutes at a time. We need to ensure that each upgrade allows the player to traverse the world in more interesting ways to keep things feeling fresh and fun every time the player goes out into the world to search for resources.
A great example of a level that changes drastically when traversing it with different tools is the Sand Zone from Cave Story. Sand Zone is an amazing level because it's designed to showcase the strengths of the Machine Gun, and it changes how you interact with the enemies and level design. However the level is still completable without the machine gun, where the player needs to be precise with their movement and weapon usage to succeed. This is the kind of level design I believe the game will need in order to keep the player's engagement. Right now, the planned upgrades for the game include a BOTW style glider, a hammer used to break specific walls, a placeable bounce pad and a speed booster of some kind, so we definitely have the tools needed to create a world like the one I described.
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