I do love paper prototyping. Â I can work faster on the computer, building things out as I go using something like Unity or GS.Creator, but I can’t always take the computer with me.
Well, scratch that, I *can* but that doesn’t always mean I can work on it. Â Working on paper is much less conspicuous, and engenders a lot fewer looky-loos and questions (crack a computer open while you’re waiting for a Little League practice to finish up, and invariably the other parents suck up your time with small talk and requests to see what you’re up to… Â And don’t even get me started on trying to use a laptop while waiting on a swimming lesson, chlorine does horrible things… Â horrible horrible things…)
So whatever I can do on paper, I work out on paper. Â Anything to push the process forward during any free time I have. Â Sketchups for title screens, level layouts, character designs, outlines and gameplay mechanics. Â Not all of it gets used, but when it *does* get used, making the move from paper to computer is pretty quick and painless and is less prone to creeping-feature-itis than freewheeling it in Digital.
So over the weekend I made some decisions to go with Unity as my tool and to work on a puzzle game. Â Building something like a “match-3” game (a-la Bejeweled) requires an array setup, which is a little outside my programming experience at this point. Â One of the games in my backlog of projects is a “flow” type puzzler game, you know where you are essentially adjusting a maze to allow the flow of…whatever to pass from one end of the maze to another? Â So I think I will run with that one. Â I particularly like to physics aspects of working with 3d, so I’ll see if I can find a way to get that in there as well.
I’ve been noodling with the maze aspect on paper, still trying to figure out how to work the physics in. Â Maybe I can use sand or something to move through the maze instead of filling in.
I’ve linked to a pic from my sketchbook here, more to come as I get the ball rolling…
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/106703584505799913797/albums/posts/5750589440399914242
