Hey. You're back.

You see me without illusion. We are distant and unknown to each other. The thin gossamer of kindness has not smoothed my harsh edges and yet... You're back.

Is it obligation or something else that's brought you here again, to me?

Welcome once more to

Leggy! the Miraculous Robotic Arm!

Leggy the miraculous robotic arm
[is / will eventually be / might eventually be]
a game about a robotic arm. It is a puzzle game that has nothing at all in common with Bennet Foddy's QWOP.

Truth

In many ways I miss the clarity that came with severe depression. Things are better now, so much so, and I wouldn't change that... But it allowed me to see my own work without filter. From Leggy's inception I have spoken about it in terms of QWOP, Surgeon Simulator, and I am Bread. These are not accurate comparisons any longer, if they ever were. On the positive side, the controller I actually designed, rather than the one I deluded myself into thinking I was creating, is quite intuitive. Constraints in the implementation of those controls has prevented them from being as smooth as I initially designed. I don't have an explanation for how my idea of the game was able to drift so far from the reality of what I designed; I suppose I simply hadn't taken time to think about whether my design fit my conceptualization of the outcome.

Leggy

However, there is extremely positive news to report!

Leggy - Controls Implemented

Leggy works! It's not what I envisioned, far from it, but after the massive struggles we've had with so many different aspects of this project this is a massive win for us.

Leggy - Final Texture State

Leggy has also gotten a full sleeve of tats! The above image shows Leggy's final state that it will achieve near the end of the game. As play progresses it acquires more and more doodles from the child character each time the child asks it to perform a task. This is intended to show the player a visual indicator of their progress through the game and to act as mementos of previous levels. Due to the time constraints of this project we were unable to implement doodles that were relevant to the level that was completed; this is a point I can improve on as a designer in the future.

UI, Game Flow

We've begun implementing UI and the macro gameplay loop.

UI - Pause Menu

UI - Level Select

UI - Retry Level

It feels strange to only now be implementing the primary game flow elements (e.g. main menu -> primary game play -> main menu or pause, etc.) but we've been hyper-focused on ensuring that Leggy and our back-end systems were functional. Perhaps the biggest mistake I've made during this project was listening to the advice of folks that suggested the programming requirements for the project were minimal. In the future I'll be sure to listen to my instincts on such matters.

Sound

Sound - Adaptive Music

Our sound designer has put some serious time into creating fantastic music for the project. The music has three broad motifs that are adaptive based on the player's time spent in the level as well as their overall progress through the game. He's since updated the music to be even more incredible as well! I'm extremely excited to implement this into the project: it's going to massively influence the overall game feel.

Challenges & Solutions

We're not out of the woods yet. Currently we've been pushing extremely hard to integrate all of the incredible art and assets the team has made into the project. Integration has been going smoothly...for the most part. Due to my relative unfamiliarity with Unity I initially set up the project using Unity's built-in render pipeline rather than the Universal Render Pipeline. I've since fixed this mistake and instructed the team on how to quickly fix any broken materials. Aside from that hiccough integration is going well and we're also getting FMOD set up with the amazing adaptive music mentioned above. We're also working on implementing mechanics specific to each level and wiring all the back-end systems together. I'm eager to see this project to completion. Shall we be excited for the future together?