I’ve been spinning my wheels a bit lately trying to nail down the controls for my latest prototype. Everything is ready to move forward but I can’t help tweaking gameplay ever so slightly on an almost nightly basis. I think the point I left off at last night will be sufficient to move forward, but I’m worried that once I build out a true gray box first level and start scripting enemy AI, I’m going to get stuck in the mud again, endlessly reworking the control design. Because so many of my games never really proceed past this point, I lack the perspective of knowing whether this is time better spent on other aspects, or if it’s crucial to nail this down early. My instinct says, ‘gameplay must be fun, first and foremost’ but my experience as a developer tells me that eventually future level design will probably break whatever I’ve decided upon so far.
So that’s what I’m wrestling with right now, really no different than anything else I’ve encountered at this point. It’s still all about managing my time and being efficient with the little energy I have left when I get home from work. Probably not a good time to be working on my unfinished game backlog I suppose…