Dev Diary #6 - Mechanics

Hello Adventurers!

This week I'm sharing a little bit on the team's approach towards the general game mechanics of SAMUDRA. 

This early game level consist of a little bit of everything that a player would experience throughout the rest of the game, such as exploring multiple routes, secret areas with collectibles, obstacles & foes encounters. chase sequences and of course puzzles.

We are aware from seeing the feedbacks of the demo, and also from being a longtime gamer, that QTE or Quick Time Events could sometimes be frowned upon, perhaps even considered a design no-no, this is due to its outdated usage within the more mechanically sound modern day action titles which encourages more manual approaches to player maneuvers or decision making. However I believe that not all QTEs are bad, and most modern titles still disguises QTE in various forms. SAMUDRA started out being design to be a Point & Click puzzle adventure reminiscent to titles such as Machinarium, Broken Age, Samorost, and the game currently still retains a very P&C ish feel to its puzzle solving & explorative sequences, however that design was adapted to serve the faster pace and action oriented sequences in newer sections, so in many ways the mechanics now resembles more similarly to  titles such as Little Nightmare, The Gardens Between. Journey, albeit without a manual 'jump' button. 

So, with the one-button P&C system paired with varying types of sequential & logic puzzles, along with with QTE sequences during action sequences - we now have this fuller experience that is simple enough to pick up (after all its one-button) but ultimately fulfilling and fun to play! You'd be surprised at what could be achieved in terms of puzzle play with only using solely 1 button. 

The most challenging part of this project mechanically (or any project really) is to keep things consistent, we did not have the resources or experience to build ourselves an engine for this project when we started out, so many things are coded manually and this usually turns out to be quite a pain when revising certain things down the line, its quite a task to handle a project with a somewhat unorthodox approach in design, but hey we learnt a lot from this and making the best of whatever we got. 

So feel free to give us more feedbacks and your thoughts on the game so far!

Stay Safe and Stay Home!

- El

.

Feel free to Wishlist the game on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1116260/SAMUDRA/

.

Follow us at:

https://twitter.com/khayalan_arts/

https://www.instagram.com/samudra_game/

https://www.facebook.com/khayalan.arts.9

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5H6-mR2XT3u2KvUJTU4F8w