Brand New Game Design

I mentioned the last time around that I decided to redo the entire game design after finding the last demo quite boring to play.

I’ve finally managed to get 17 pairs of eyes on the initial slide deck with a sample Day 1, and have refined the idea where I’m currently on iteration #8. Feedback has stabilized to the point where I was comfortable enough to begin working on the actual game itself.

In short, the game will be moving from a large map where the player navigates around and interacts with objects to a tile-based game, where tiles flip around when you tap / click on them. (So like cards.) The player still navigates from tile to tile, and the inventory and clock still ticks, but the navigational controls are now different.

This helps with the following issues:

• Drawing out a large map takes a ton of time, particularly as environmental art needs time and there’s a lot of empty space right now.

• Tiles simplify what your focus should be on. Realistically, you’ll find a lot of different plants in the same area, and if I were to replicate this out on the map, the player might be overwhelmed with too many options. In contrast, tiles show only the relevant piece of information on them which helps to decrease the complexity.

• Tiles are easily scalable in size and “map shape”, and easy to randomize.

With this in mind, I began thinking about implementation again.

During my feedback solicitation process, I was recommended by someone to purchase and use Unity store assets, particularly the asset Feel. And luckily for me, the summer sale began recently (and will be going until August 27, 2025 Chicago time), which lowered the price by half!

From here, I identified the core mechanic of the game (tile flipping and exploration) was able to work off of the demo on cards. This sped up my development time significantly, though it wasn’t quite without its challenges.

For now, you can see the basic tile flipping mechanics in this short clip.

Video clip of how the tile mechanics work

I’m super grateful that there’s quite a few people showing interest in this game and giving me valuable feedback. I’ll keep you guys updated as I continue developing this out, e.g., adding on inventory, timing, player stats, etc.