The development of Hangry Giants has been a loooong road. Check this out:
This screenshot is from the prototype I built in the first week of development. It looks nothing like the final game. It seems to involve apples, salt, and different kinds of sugar. This is because the art is simply placeholders from an earlier project.
While it may seem more like Egyptian hieroglyphics for an apple pie recipe, you can see how the basic structure of the final game is already there. There are two lines of symbols. The top line shows the symbols you want while the bottom line shows the symbols you have. The bunch of apples on the left is selected. The basic idea was the same as in the final game. Only the appearance changed, and the surrounding fiction of why you're trying to match these lines of symbols.
The core mechanic, which basically means "what the player spends most of their time doing", is well established. Yet it worked a little differently in some ways back then. For example, the available trades in this prototype scrolled across the bottom (they're the boxes with question marks). You had to select 1, 2, or 3 symbols and tap a corresponding number of trades. It added tension because sometimes you didn't have the correct number of trades available and had to wait for one to appear.
Why didn't this make the cut? Well, it was a bit too complicated. Even after reading the previous paragraph, you might still not get it. It's hard to explain. So it was neat in practice, and was easy to play once you "got" it. But I quickly came to realize that every single thing your player needs to "get" means fewer people will play your game. That's a whole topic I'll explore in a future entry (maybe tomorrow?). For now, let's just say, the fewer rules the better. It's less for your player to understand, and it's less for you to teach them.
Another big difference is how you selected the symbols. If two or more identical symbols were beside each other, like a pair or three-of-a-kind, it automatically selected them all. That meant you had to break up these pairs or groups if you only wanted to trade one of them. This, too, was a pretty nifty approach with its own problems. Unlike the trade mechanic, it wasn't confusing. It was just laborious and annoying. So it got chopped.
I've always found the evolution of ideas really cool. It may not be your cup of tea. That's fine. For me, seeing ideas get scrutinized, crushed, refined, and polished - watching them get better and better - is nirvanic (is that a word? Yes.) Sanding off the hard edges. Nurturing an idea for days or weeks, only to throw it away because it's just not right. That's the hard, painful process of creating that leads to real abiding love for your creation. If you just knocked out any old thing, well, why would you care about it?
With Hangry Giants, there's a ton of stuff I might do differently given a second chance at it. But I guarantee you, there isn't a single part of it that didn't face fierce scrutiny and probably several tough decisions.
While it may seem more like Egyptian hieroglyphics for an apple pie recipe, you can see how the basic structure of the final game is already there. There are two lines of symbols. The top line shows the symbols you want while the bottom line shows the symbols you have. The bunch of apples on the left is selected. The basic idea was the same as in the final game. Only the appearance changed, and the surrounding fiction of why you're trying to match these lines of symbols.
The core mechanic, which basically means "what the player spends most of their time doing", is well established. Yet it worked a little differently in some ways back then. For example, the available trades in this prototype scrolled across the bottom (they're the boxes with question marks). You had to select 1, 2, or 3 symbols and tap a corresponding number of trades. It added tension because sometimes you didn't have the correct number of trades available and had to wait for one to appear.
Why didn't this make the cut? Well, it was a bit too complicated. Even after reading the previous paragraph, you might still not get it. It's hard to explain. So it was neat in practice, and was easy to play once you "got" it. But I quickly came to realize that every single thing your player needs to "get" means fewer people will play your game. That's a whole topic I'll explore in a future entry (maybe tomorrow?). For now, let's just say, the fewer rules the better. It's less for your player to understand, and it's less for you to teach them.
Another big difference is how you selected the symbols. If two or more identical symbols were beside each other, like a pair or three-of-a-kind, it automatically selected them all. That meant you had to break up these pairs or groups if you only wanted to trade one of them. This, too, was a pretty nifty approach with its own problems. Unlike the trade mechanic, it wasn't confusing. It was just laborious and annoying. So it got chopped.
I've always found the evolution of ideas really cool. It may not be your cup of tea. That's fine. For me, seeing ideas get scrutinized, crushed, refined, and polished - watching them get better and better - is nirvanic (is that a word? Yes.) Sanding off the hard edges. Nurturing an idea for days or weeks, only to throw it away because it's just not right. That's the hard, painful process of creating that leads to real abiding love for your creation. If you just knocked out any old thing, well, why would you care about it?
With Hangry Giants, there's a ton of stuff I might do differently given a second chance at it. But I guarantee you, there isn't a single part of it that didn't face fierce scrutiny and probably several tough decisions.