I decided to participate in the “Search For A Star” challenge/game jam organized by the Grads In Games Team. The challenge was to make a game using a provided minesweeper game.
Initially, it was very difficult to come to an idea about what kind of game I could make using the minesweeper game as a base. There were some ideas about making a puzzle game using the tiles and the board, after that there were some ideas about turn-based games. But none of them stuck with me as these ideas felt more like “what I can do” instead of “what I would find fun to play”. After I started to think about what would I like to play, I started to draw inspiration from games like Doom and Titanfall 2 with lots o gun action and movement. And to satisfy the need to use the code behind the minesweeper game, the grid and building mechanism were introduced.
Luckily, before starting my work, I saw the tweet by Delaney King about building games using the spiral method. That is why menus, save data writing and loading were set to be the first things to be developed. After that, I had to boil everything down to the most basic components that would be used within the game, which meant to create a level that would allow only one structure, use the most basic enemy AI and the player would use the most basic gun. After which, everything could be expanded.
Due to personal circumstances, it was quite difficult to work on this project, but because of the spiral method, I was able to get a simple prototype working and expand it a little bit. That is why I am happy with what I managed to produce with the time I spent on this project. I would like to expand this game more. The extensions would include more guns, more enemies, more structures, support for multiple enemies, weapons and structures within a game level. Also, it would be fun to try adding more movement options, like teleportation, grappling hook, wall running, special platforms, but this would require more complex environments than what is currently offered.
Martynas Antipenkovas 