Welcome to my notes about Yuuka's Defense for Sunflowers (優香のひまわりの守り)!

Here lies some of the thoughts, ideas, and messages for the current game jam version, as well as the ones concerning the post-jam version.

A. Message to the Players and Game Developers

Firstly, I would like to give my thanks to all of you who have tried and played the game!

So far, this little game project is the one in the most playable state amongst the previous projects that I have made (considering that it is in a 'finished state' as it is a game jam submission), so personally, I am really thankful for the time and thoughts you have shared with me.

I appreciate a lot all the feedback I have received. These ideas, aside from the ones I came up with, would be impossible without your concerns and suggestions!

B. Thoughts on the Current Version

To start with, personally, I find the general gameplay lackluster. As for the visuals and audio, there is a lot of things to be done but I am satisfied with how they came out. So far, there is a lot of issues that are present within the current build, and I am going to point out these in the next details.

Note: The order of the things I am mentioning here does not imply their relative importance; I see them equally in terms of prioritization.

B.1. Timer

Firstly, the most noticeable (at least for me) issue is the game's timer.

By starting the game, it immediately plays the huge timer at the top of the screen, and that should, supposedly, encourage the players to act as fast as possible to do the objective, i.e., to gather as much souls as possible by defeating the goblins within Yuuka's vicinity.

However, the game fails to do so as the timer does not pose threat at all, and this is due to that the player can gain additional, constantly, 5 seconds for the timer per collected soul. With this, the timer does not feel like a timer at all, and the player is no longer reminded of the 'posed threat', which in turn, the challenge is no longer present.

What could have done with this build is that the additional time that could be gained per collected soul should be only around 0-2 seconds, meaning that it would be randomized, and thus, also, not guarantees the player to get more time just because they have collected a soul.

Effects like beats, and changes with the timer's color could also help on emphasizing the remaining time and even whenever additional times were gained; red when it reaches timeout, and green when it gains more time.

B.2. Forms

Aside from the timer, there are also issues with the other gameplay aspect, and that is with Yuuka's available forms in the game.

The difference between Yuuka's two forms, i.e., chibi and dekai forms, are not distinguishable at all. Certainly, the damage the dekai form deals is far more deadly (thus more convenient to use) compared to chibi form's, but all of their controls just falls apart.

To give an overview with the forms:

1. chibi - faster movement speed but smaller, weaker projectiles and jump heights

2. dekai - slow speed but bigger, powerful projectiles and jump heights

The controls, specifically the change with Yuuka's jump and double jump, would be more distinguishable if the game's world size is more vast. By making it larger, there are more varieties of planes or platforms to navigate and reach with.

Also, as for the bullets, the randomized range of damages does not help at all as the there is only one type of an enemy, i.e., the chibi Suika, and each one contains 20 health in total. If there are more kinds of enemies, example, ghosts (as also part of the game jam's theme), then there are also varieties with health and damages that being dealt with which emphasizes the differences of the two.

In addition, the bullet sizes should also vary with their speed, and therefore making it more challenging to pick from and use in certain conditions.

More variety of bullets aside from the sunflower would be a (literal) game changer too.

Moreover, when it come to Yuuka's form, I guess a 'yandere' mode would be cool; this form can either be an unlockable feature or a brief powerup during in-game session.

Lastly, regarding Yuuka's transformations, the portrait should also be capable of changing in respect to the form that is present at the moment, but unfortunately, I already ran out of enough time to make and include the chibi form's portrait.

B.3. World

I would love to have a relatively large world which the player could freely traverse and play with, but by focusing for the HTML5 port firstly before the downloadable executable ports forced me to build a smaller area instead. I am still studying on how to optimize things, especially when it involves the world size and the numbers of objects to render at a game loop, and by far, this is the most optimized game I have made compared to my previous works.

I took the world's size in consideration that it would likely be hard to be rendered in an HTML5 port, and so I focused on a smaller scale. Aside from the world's size, the game is playable at decent FPS as the objects that do not need any interaction with any light sources have their light masks turned off - with this, each object does not need to consistently detect for any light sources that align with their light masks. I also used VisibilityEnabler node (what I usually use for other projects too) to automatically and immediately stop the process, physics process, animations, etc. of an object whenever it leaves the screen.

There are 3 kinds of custom VisibilityEnabler I have made, but I will write and explain it at a separate paste.

B.4. Scoring

The scoring system is absent. Of course there is a detailed brief of the player's stats after the game, but that is just it. A proper scoring system based on the player's efforts would be a great asset to the game as it can also be a source for sense of accomplishment and rewards.

Also regarding the 'total time' in the Game Over screen, I made a mistake about that. See, the total time should display as what its name states, the total time in which the player have spent on playing the game, however, its output is incorrect as it only shows what time is left with the timer. I forgot to separate and store the total accumulated time into another variable, my mistake.

Overall in terms of the scoring aspect, it would be better if the score is based from the records of the player, while including the records of the following: the total time spent in the game, the remaining time (if the player dies whilst having time), number of souls collected (should be separate to the number of goblins killed as these dropped items should have a time limit for remaining in the world), and the number of the enemies that have been killed.

B.5. Menus/UI

The menus are truly done in terms of their functionalities. However, other menus are absent such as the credits, help, about, settings, and others.

The game does have info regarding the credits and controls whenever the pause screen is displayed, but I would much prefer that they are separated with their respective menus. I do not have much time so this was the least I could do to include them, i.e., display them at the pause screen.

Credits regarding the author for the music was not also included within the game; I have only credited them in the itch page, and therefore I will add them for the post-jam version.

The ones that would be added post jam are the settings, help, and credits menu.

B.6. Enemies

Suika fits the (Japanese) goblin theme, however, having only one type of enemy in the game (at least in this kind of work and in my execution) make it lacking.

As Suika is portrayed as a chibi in the game, it also implies the existence of herself in dekai form, but I was not able to pull it off within the given time so that variety was absent. Also, the only things that are considered as ghosts (albeit rather having no will) in this game are the dropped souls from the goblins.

Also, as mentioned by create2019, there is an issue on getting sandwiched between two Suikas, and that issues lies with the strength of the knockback the player receives whenever they are being hit by the Japanese goblins. With this, I will tone down the strength and even tweak with its sound effects.

Considering the aforementioned, I will add the dekai varieties of the Japanese goblins, and other types of enemies as well in the post-jam version.

B.7. Narrative

The story is not comprehensive nor present at all in-game. The game just immediately *assumes that the player would go and do some goblin hunting.

The help section from the pause screen does not even include it too. Therefore, in order to make the game more clear with its purpose/goals, and to explain the reasoning behind the game mechanics, a story must be properly presented at the start and other time frames of the game.

I plan on drawing the characters I have in mind, as currently, I only have Yuuka's whole sprite and it is still WIP. After some of them are done being rendered, I will include those for the VN-like scenes and other cut scenes in the post-jam version.

B.8. User Experience

The sound effects were pointed out as relatively loud, and I completely agree. I just noticed it much later after testing the game at a relatively long session. I will fix this issue in the post-jam version by including a setting functionalities.

B.9 Gameplay

As you can tell, the title of the game seems too off. The game is called 'Yuuka's Defense for Sunflowers' but does not show it anywhere in the game. In this game, YUUKA ONLY SHOOTS OUT SUNFLOWERS AS PROJECTILES, BUT NOT DEFENDS THEM.

I have not applied the originally intended mechanics of the game, i.e., tower defense elements in which you, as Yuuka, will defend a humongous mother flower from a horde of Japanese goblins, ghosts, etc.

About the controls of the game, the only way to attack numerously in a short span of time is to hastily hit the K key, which is not suitable for a long sessions of gameplay. Thank you Nalyne for pointing it out! I will add an option to fire multiple bullets by simply holding the key and/or completely remove this current input method.

Waves of enemies, as suggested by bluemeerkat, could be implemented to emphasize the dynamic difficulty of the game over time. Furthermore, resting periods were also mentioned, therefore they would be included in the post-jam version.

Additionally, thanks to kurantoB for pointing the title out (not directly mentioning it, but by implying that their expectation did not met in respect to the game's title).

Conclusively, in terms of the gameplay, there is a lot of things to fix in order to (hopefully) deliver a better experience to the players.

Overall, those are the issues I am yet to work with and fix. Surely there is a lot more that I have not mentioned nor thought of but they can be included later on as I work with the post-jam version.

As for the visuals and audio, just like what mentioned earlier, they are satisfactory so far, albeit rather excessive with repetitions in their varieties. Still, I am happy on how the parallax background turned out so far (in terms of both visuals and performance); despite its numbers and the shaders which handles their scroll animation, the game does not lag (that much at least). Regarding the audio, well, as much as possible I would like to use my own assets, but I have no much experience with composing music (aside from two old game projects I made way back in 2020) and therefore I would rely to free assets for the meantime.

C. To-Do List

- Update the game mechanics into the originally intended one (or just combine it with the current mechanics).

    - Add the tower defense mechanics.

- Update the scoring system.

    - Add the scores base on the number of kills and collected souls.

    - Fix the 'Total Time' record.

    - Add the record of kills.

- Update the form/transformation system.

    - Change the balance in terms of the stats per form.

    - Add yandere mode/form (a skill w/ cooldown or a total unlockable form).

- Update the menus and UI.

    - Add the help, section, and credits menu.

    - Add chibi (and yandere's if available already) portrait for the in-game UI.

    - Add in-game score UI.

- Add varieties of enemies and bullets.

    - Add the shop for upgrades and other unlockable items.

    - Add dekai Suika, ghosts, and other types of enemies.

- Fix the Timer's overall system and add more effects to it.

- Add the secret feature/s for gamers :3