Visuals First, Confidence Later

A critical dad, a patient teen, and a backwards-flying insect walk into a game...

Hi, I'm David and this is my place to talk about what I love most: making video games with my 13-year-old son Luke. Last year, we released a Roguelike called Brawlberry. Now we're working on an Irish-themed couch-coop 3D Platformer called Druids Crown. This is my place to talk about how this is going and to nerd out on all things games and game dev.

And so here we are, back on the grind. But this time, we’re taking a more restrained approach.

We have a game loop: you take a ball from the top of a tree to the bottom.
We have a mechanic: plant a seed, fire, propel the player around the world.
We have everything we need for a demo.

From a bit of playtesting, I can already tell the demo is just about the right length. But now comes the hard part: polish.

The demo won’t be good unless we iterate, again and again, until it becomes a perfect encapsulation of the experience we want to build at scale. This demo sets the bar for the whole game. It’s also something we can actively share, and use as a calling card to show people: “Look, we’re serious about this. We can make something with real quality.”

So, where to begin…?

Visuals and audio.

The things we usually ignore until the very end.
Not this time. We’ve learned from our mistakes.

Visuals first then.

Looking at the game right now, there isn’t a single thing I’m happy with.
Being critical comes naturally to me (sometimes to my own detriment). Luke often gives out to me for tearing his work apart. My wife says I’m too harsh, but, in my defence, I’m equally harsh with everyone and my own work. I do it with love and passion for what this can be, and I think it has helped raise the bar on everything we have made together.

But when everything is in that rough, early state, that critical eye isn’t the most useful skill. So, where do I start? Randomly

There’s so much to do.
I’m just going to try to hit everything at least once and see where we land.

The quality bar for this game, in every area, should hit at least 80%.
We’re not trying to make it perfect (I’m not sure we’d know how). Plus, that extra 20% might kill us. But if we see something that could be better, we should fix it. For the things we can’t yet see, I’m hoping the expertise and feedback from those around us will help reveal them.

The first thing I tackled was the landscape.
Right now, the game is a flat world. And, conspiracy theories aside, it really needs to be the rolling hills of Ireland.

I tried out a Godot plugin Luke recommended, but it was a bit advanced for me. We're aiming for one small step into landscape creation, not “industry standard” just yet. So I went back to Blender, and out of it, a world was born.

Luke saw my sad excuse for water and added a shader to give it some life.

Next up was our lovely Altar of Life.
Right now, it’s just a stump and some rocks—not exactly the ancient ritual site I had in mind. A scattering of plants in the area has helped a bit, though clearly more needs to be done.

Then we move on to a half-arsed butterfly.
Currently, it flies backwards and doesn’t flap its wings, but no one can say it isn’t in the game.

Meanwhile, Luke took this cool Blender effect I found and implemented it perfectly.We can now draw vines onto our models.He also added another effect that lets us slap on decals; any scribbles we get from our artist can now live in the game.

He also implemented footsteps.

Yeah, he had a better week than me.
But I’m trying.

We’re at that stage of development where everything needs a lick of paint, so the focus now is on the areas that give us the most bang for our buck.

We’re not hitting the quality bar yet, but we’re taking clear steps in that direction.

That’s all for this week, motivation is strong, and we have a clear vision for what we are doing. And next week the butterfly will be less bad.