This week was mostly a week of second guessing last week. The main conflict was deciding between the old structure (single linear path with many branches) and the new structure (many linear paths with no branches). I had many ideas to make the branching system more interesting. I was worried about removing movement choice so aggressively would make the game feel a little too devoid of player choice. I also felt having many linear paths would remove the simplicity of making progressing to the end being the main objective at all times. But for all the ideas I had for improving it, none of them really solved the core problem of making advancing on the map have a more satisfying sense of progression. Many of them actively encouraged backtracking, which goes against the central push your luck format of the game. Eventually I came to terms with this and feel pretty confident about the new dungeon format.

So at this point I have all the pieces that make up the game strewn about the floor and I am carefully putting them back together. Throwing out the pieces that no longer make sense, fleshing out the new ideas to support the central pillars of the game. It’s going pretty slowly for whatever reason, but I’m finally starting to put the game back together. In the process of doing so I actually reformatted the event tile system in such a way that really excites me (in short, players will be able to manipulate the luck of events to a degree- either to their benefit or the detriment of others). Combine that with the new dungeon structure and I’m starting to really feel good about the game. Hopefully this design phase will come to a close this week.