Rock! Paper! Wizards! Reflections

Rock! Paper! Wizards! is finally out! After three months of off and on work, I completed and released my first video game since October 2021. Overall, I’m very proud to have finished and I’m generally happy with the way the game turned out. This project represents my first foray into the world of Godot after previously working in GameMaker Studio previously. More importantly still, this was a big return to game development for me.

Introduction / Introspection

The last project that I attempted to work on for 2022 was my first attempt at creating a “real,” non-jam project. I was originally going to try to spend 6–12 months on the project and hopefully get a tightly scoped shooter/platformer finished as my first “real” project. Long story short, I started out strong but eventually lost momentum and motivation and dropped the project.

With that in mind the primary goal for this Tiny Mass Games project was to finish.

I think generally people (a younger version of myself included) fall into the trap of wanting to be a great game developer. Which is a pretty lofty, and frankly nebulous, goal. The problem with goals like these is that there are infinite failure conditions and potentially zero win conditions. What exactly is a great game developer anyway? When I look back at my work I get struck by a particularly self-defeating thought: “I could do that.” In fact, I did do that.

However, instead of saying “I did it!” As an exclamation, by some trick of my own psychology I have turned a description of my own success into a put down of any growth or training that I had done. The previously unattainable becomes pedestrian, but instead of celebrating the progress I tend to notice how far is left instead of how far I have come. So I think that the goal of being a great anything is a fool’s errand. I would be the arbiter of greatness and I am absolutely unreliable.

So becoming a great game designer is off the table, but I think that leaves me with something more valuable though which is the work itself.

The Game

https://be0.itch.io/rockpaperwizards

The game is done! It works, it looks ok, and it meets most of the goals that I had set out for it. In my game design document I wrote the following:

The goal of this game is to provide the excitement of a fighting game, in a fast paced and accessible package. The basic idea here is a deconstructed fighting game (incorporating the offense triangle) mixed with the Kirby Samurai minigame.

I think the game is pretty exciting, especially when people throw the same spell and there’s a clash. It was definitely gratifying to watch my friends compete and yell at each other while playing. This was honestly my top goal for the project, so I was thrilled with this. It’s also definitely fast-paced with the rounds lasting for less than 10 seconds on average.

This game is for people who want to compete against their friends, but in a casual and fun way. It should be competitive and provide an engaging level of depth/strategy but the primary concern is the ability for players to pick up and play the game.

I’d say I met this goal about half way. The tutorial was slapped together last-minute and it shows, but I think the fact that the game has only three buttons and very few mechanics made this at least partially successful.

I think there were a couple mistakes in the way I implemented the logic for this game. I actually have the entirety of the game logic separated out from the players’ sprites, wins and losses are all based on time and timing as opposed to what your wizard is doing on the screen. This was great for prototyping as I was able to quickly slap together something that could work without having to fuss over any assets. The drawback that I hadn’t considered, though, was that once the assets were in the player would feel a disconnect between their character’s actions and the game’s result which really hurt the game feel. If I were to re-make this game I would definitely just have the character’s actual spells and collisions matter as opposed to just having them be a cosmetic façade over the actual game.

I think the strengths of the game are in its accessibility and aesthetic, which both turned out pretty much how I imagined. I also think being very strict on scope was critical in getting this project finished. I took a lot longer than intended on this project, primarily because I was learning how to fit game dev into my life and schedule. The fact that I completed the game and didn’t feel stressed was a huge win for me, especially compared to my normal game jam workflow of being in a fugue state for about a week.

The Results

It’s been a few weeks since the game was released and as of today the game has gotten 86 plays which is close to the number I was hoping for with this one. I’m hoping to get 100 people to play my next game. The $54.69 in revenue is almost exclusively from family and friends being cool, but one person did buy the game after finding it through the store page which was pretty cool! The biggest driver of traffic was the Tiny Mass Games itch page, so I really appreciate everyone in that community’s support.

Conclusion

I made a game! It turned out good enough. Onto the next one.

-beo