Deadeye Gold: Designer Blog: 1

Deadeye Desperado is back at it again with another full semester of development! I just want to start off by thanking our original team, Young Guns, as well as our professors for getting us to this point. These blog posts will be a little different from the last set of them, as they will be split into Design and Production posts, rather than covering everything at once. I will be covering the design portion, as the game designer and progenitor of the game.

So, what is Deadeye Desperado? It's a first person shooter with a magical wild-west theme. The player is tasked with exploring abandoned mines inhabited by hostile golems in order to collect all 6 rune-stones, which allow the player to imbue their bullets with unique powers. The player has the freedom to create custom magazines to be loaded on command, as well as revolve their cylinder without firing to switch up their strategy on the fly.

This sprint in particular i wanted to address a few things i thought didn't go quite so well the first time through. There were big things that needed to be iterated upon. The character controller for example needed to be much more fluid, as the game felt too slow typically, and overwhelming in combat portions. This new controller helps the slow parts go by faster, and gives the player another option in combat. Easily tied into that idea was the character and gun themselves. The original version was fairly cool, all things considered. But i believed we could do better. As such we've made progress in concepting a new player character, and an iconic weapon to have at their side.  This will include new arms and legs primarily, to give the player a sense of being in the world.

There were certainly other design issues i wanted to address as well, such as the lack of any clear save points. The player mostly ambled through the game with a linear direction, and no idea when they had made significant progress. To solve these issues, we are moving to a non-linear structure for the game progression, as well as adding a dedicated checkpoint statue to let the player know when it's safe. In addition we are adding a dedicated tutorial area to teach the player everything they'll need to know to play the game.

The last major thing i wanted to discuss was the symbols we used in the game for the bullets. We found them to be rather lacking in the end, and as such they have gone through a redesign to fit in theme with one another, and to add in the two new bullets that will be shortly implemented. 

This is obviously a far from extensive list as to what we've covered this sprint. We had other amazing work like new crystal geodes and new torches and awesome ui for the new magazine customization system, but you'll find that coverage over in the production blog.  Overall though, I'm much happier with these design decisions than my previous ones, and the game continues to move forward daily. The machine is started, we just need to keep her chugging.

Thanks for reading, and look forward to regular updates!

Cameron Smith, Game Designer