Devlog 05: Brazier for the Sky

Hey everyone, in this video I was having such a good run I wanted to show how getting more health can change gameplay. So, in Brazier for the Sky if you collect fireballs you increase the length of your fire… But this isn’t always a good thing…

Main changes: I have added a main menu, pause menu and a death menu. There are plans to add options for different tile sets and player characters, music volume etc. I have also added a highscore and a water level height to give extra panic to players.  

Upon reflection when I made the block explode when heated up there was something that bothered me. If you have less fire you shouldn’t be able to heat them up so easily, but also if you have too much fire the heat should be more intense. So that’s exactly what it did. The longer the flame the more block you heat up at the same time. This changes how the player plays the game in taking more caution what blocks to stand on and what blocks are going to be affected. The opposite is also true. The less flame the player finds they have to jump to heat the blocks above them. This causes the player to be less reckless when they have less health. I was able to control when the block explodes much better when I had less health.

I had recently red some scholarly writing on videogames that described two different approaches to games – paidea and ludic. My understanding of these two terms is paidea is similar to a playground where the player plays without restriction. They can do what ever they want (think creative mode in Minecraft), while ludic is to play within a set of rules. These rules are either imposed on by the player or the designer (think survival mode in Minecraft).

I will try to incorporate a balance of these two approaches in the future. As for my current game I think I have unwittingly added elements of both. There is the ludic rules of the ‘world’ as the player tries to get higher and higher as designed, but there is also a means of the player to impose their own ludic rules. I also believe I have added some elements of paidea as the player can engage in playful exploding of blocks. But I do think there could be some more elements added. Overall the gameplay is essentially finished and I am now working on small aesthetic items, artwork etc. One area I think I can improve on is the blocks. They seem to be a bit bland with just the green grass. There is an opportunity to add some playful paidea elements for the player to engage with. I should have a workable demo soon…

Also, I still need to animate the player.