Design Challenges
Super Palette Swapper was a joy to design, but not without its setbacks. Above is the old design document, made before sweeping changes to the underlying design were made in an effort to make the game even more fun. This was a project where it took a very long time to find the fun. At first, I thought it would be from taking elements that I like from other platformers, but I found out the hard way that that alone would not make a fun game. The elements had to have synergy, and the game itself had to have a unique hook. That hook, for a very long time was thought to be the palette system, but I had realized that it was just a glorified Mega Man weapon select, and calling that the most fun gameplay aspect of any given Mega Man game would be just plain incorrect.
The main points of contention, after gathering player and team feedback were the following:
The player did not have enough basic abilities
The game needed a new hook that tied to its paint theme
The game needed a sense of flow
To address these critiques, I made the following changes:
The player would now unlock both a new weapon for each new paint but also a new movement option as well. For example, the red paint would now allow the player to dash regardless of which paint they have selected, and it would also give them a short-range flamethrower weapon.
The player can now chain movement options together. For example, by canceling a dash into a slam, the player will maintain the faster “dash” speed when they recoil from the slam.
The player can now bounce off of enemy heads by slamming into them from above.
The player was given a wall jump.
The hook of the game was changed to be about painting level objects to influence their properties. If you attack objects with your paint brush, they will react with whatever color paint you have selected and behave differently. New players may have to think about what color to paint the object based on what they know about each paint, but veteran players (since they already know the answers to these questions) will have fun blazing through the levels at higher speeds, finding their own flow state.
The number of paints (excluding white) would be cut from 8 to 4, meaning the number of worlds in the game would also be cut from 8 to 4. This was done to make sure players wouldn’t have to remember what 9 total paint colors would do, as well as save development time by not requiring design work for 9 variations of each level object.
These changes have all made the game much more fun, and I couldn’t be happier. However, because these design changes were made so late into development, the work required to bring the new features to life has been doubly challenging. I’ve let this be a very good lesson for my future projects, choosing to make sure the game itself has a strong and interesting hook that both sounds fun on paper and is fun in execution before continuing forward with art and polish.