Update: September 2022
It’s been a while since I made a devblog update here. That is not because I have not been working on the game - it is only because most of the work I’ve been doing is under-the-hood stuff.
I have refactored the game completely three times now. In order to get the game finished this was not entirely necessarily. But one of my primary goals with this game - which is the first game I’ve made in which I am doing all of the programming - was to develop strong programming/game making habits.
The code base I had built was not as simple and efficient as it ought to be. That’s understandable because I was learning how to program as I went. Now, after a year of working on the game, I know what the obstacles are, and I’ve learned a few tricks to get around them.
While LANDNAV is never going to be a mega-hit, it is likely that the audience who does enjoy it will want to play new maps and content over the years. A code base that is easy for me to dive back into will help me to update the game going into the future.
I now have a code base that uses a consistent design-philosophy and is fully utilizing every trick I’ve learned to future-proof the code and make it easy to modify and debug. There is still work to be done but already this new game framework is making the work of adding content to the game fast and easy.
At this point the game has been play-tested over several hundred hours by nearly 100 hundred players and rebuilt several times taking play-tester feedback into consideration. The result is that I am feeling confident that the game has become the best version of what it can be.
I’ve spent some months experimenting with different ideas. I tried turning the game into a pseudo-survival game. I thought that might make the game more appealing to a broader audience. But I learned a couple things:
To make a game with those features could easily add another year of hard work.
The fact is, land navigation is mentally challenging to a high degree. Most “average” gamers aren’t playing games because they want a serious mental workout. They want to chillout and have fun. If average gamers (i.e. people who are not already landnav/orienteering enthusiast) happen to stumble upon the game and learn to enjoy it, they would be a rare breed. I’d love for more people to discover the empowerment and joy of taking on the challenge of landnav, but I don’t think trying to cater the game to people who don’t already know is the right way to do that.
But there is still a need to make the game fun and give some meaningful goals for the player to pursue. To that end, I am including a few ways to track skill progression and also offering a few milestones to work towards completing.
Everything you do in the game will earn some number of points, whether it is completing some training, or completing a practice event, or finishing an entire competition. Points can be used to unlock new maps or character builds which will change your navigation decision-making process in interesting ways.
Taking on additional difficulty (like playing an event at night, or going “military style” where you have to plot all your control points on the map) will net you more points.
There is also a “hints” system. You can trade in some of your points to get some helper perks that you can activate during an event if you are in trouble. Think of it like asking the audience as a lifeline.
This way a player who is trying hard to learn but still struggling can get a nice boost when they need it. Learning landnav is difficult and it is typically taught using a buddy system, so in absence of that, this hint system may help to ease the learning curve.
I had hoped to have the game finished by September, but some unexpected things happened. My wife and I moved states and had to take an unexpectedly long “vacation” resulting from that.
Deciding to refactor the code one more time also set me back probably 4 weeks as well.
Now I am thinking the game should be finished around December. But once I get this refactor finished and the training scenarios ready, I’ll update the Steam playtest one last time to get another round of feedback.