Game a Week

This details from the circumstances, pre-production, production,  and polish of the game.

Circumstances

Knock Birds Out is one of many projects that I had to create within a week and the given theme had to do with birds. However, before this I had many ideas that I've prepared for that week and one of them was a turn-based battler with some kind of rock-paper-scissors combat. So I just combined those two together, and just made the character be birds.

Pre-production

Combining all of this I wanted to make sure I planned it properly. Highlighting the features the game would need and flaws, why it's needed, and several ways to implement each feature. This was to ensure it would be smooth when it comes to the production phase. So for the tools I used when creating the game I decided to use Godot for my Engine. To help develop the art I use a combination of Krita and Pixel Composer. I also decided to reuse assets and supplement assets like sounds and the characters with other sources. As concerning myself with those things would cost too much time and when it comes to implementing features in the production phase it is likely more time will be spent than should've. A balance of time and quality is vital in order to get it in time. However, I have a solid idea of what I want.

The next issue would be creating the enemy, which due to time constraints will your character, however flipped. A simple way of signifying it's your enemy. However with the rock-paper-scissor kind of game it would be kind of annoying to have the enemy have 25% chance of using each action each turn. There would be no strategy to the game at all, but everything down to luck. However, if I were to make it  prefer punches and blocks over uppercuts and dodges. Prefer punches and uppercuts over defensive options like blocks and dodges. It would make a more interesting game and an inspirition that I thought of when playing rock-paper-scissors with friends you know a lot. So the game becomes way more skillful by making it so you have to predict the enemy move. Then when solving this what do we do when the fight is over with the enemy, it would be annoying to go to the menu every time winning. So instead put a new enemy with new preferences and more health would be a decent option.

So after solving each problem, getting an outline of the things needed to create the game. Putting the above in writing with my idea of the flaws, why to implement, and how to implement. I would hope for a smooth production phase.

Production

Thanks to all the planning, production went smoothly with only minor hiccups when implementing the AI that would choose certain preferences. I also want to put out how fast it is to work with Godot on small projects. Making it quite simple to do the things I needed to do with very nice quality of life. As the project is not overly complex there is not a lot of things I do have to touch.

Polish

Then for the last phase, I only have to run a couple gameplay test to tune the difficulty and the AI to do the things I want the player to experience. An small enjoyable experience.

The game below:
https://dolloreanadog.itch.io/knock-birds-out