Things Left To Do

The goal is to release the first game before the end of 2019. There’s a lot to do to have a minimum game but the aim after that it to continue to develop the game based on user feedback, reviews and my own stretch goals. The intention, at this point, it to release the game to the Android platform for free.

Replace 2d player and enemy assets

When development of the game first started, everything was basic looking and open source art assets were used quite a lot. Our own 2D (Photoshop and Affinity Designer) versions of player and ship assets were created. As each art asset has been replaced over the past year our original 2D “hand drawn” assets are looking dated and not matching the aesthetics of the rest of the game. These are now being replaced with Blender models low poly assets that are then turned into 2D for use in the final product.
 

resource management

Although the first game has been developed with efficient resource management in mind, we have been careful not to over optimise to early. Simple resource management patterns such as Object Pooling have been started but need to be implemented throughout the game.

levels

Currently, there are only two levels to the game. It was more important to make sure that all the relevant critical parts to the game existed before creating too many levels. Creating levels takes time and a fundamental change to the game code can break all the levels. The implementation has reached the point that other levels are now being thought about properly but with the view of making sure that most of the code is in place.
 

play testing

Some play testing has been completed as the development of the game has progressed. Play testing is difficult. It takes time to simply observe someone playing your game. It’s a frustrating experience to watch someone not understand something that seems obvious to you as the developer. If they do not understand something, it’s because you didn’t make it clear enough. The game is reaching the point where independent play testing is going to be increasingly important.