This is a post I made to the Zinnia Games Blog: https://zinniagames.com/the-friday-tiding-14-from-the-ground-up/

The Friday Tiding #14: From The Ground Up

11 Apr, 2025

With new development comes new posts.

The New

Skag Malibu's new version has just hit its first milestone. That being that the player can complete levels. In simple terms the new iteration Skag Malibu is by literal definition a playable game. This is good since it means that the majority of the boring system work with the game is now complete. From this point on I can begin to focus on actually making a fun game to play.

The first big project I am going to tackle with this new iteration is adding enemies into the game. While Demo 2 had a selection of enemies throughout it, these enemies were programmed very poorly. For every enemy in the game I programmed them separately. If I wanted to make any changes or additions to the enemies I would have to do it for each and every one of them. With eight enemies in Demo 2 this was already a major hassle, and if the final game has double that or more I could end up spending hours of dev time just repeating my work.

So for the new Skag Malibu I want to instead make a modular system that all the enemy code is based on. This system will comprise of a base script that determines universal properties of the enemies, and then will be able to have additional scripts added on top to define their unique behaviors. This way if I want to make a change to how every enemy interacts or behaves with the world, I can make it once and that change propagates to all of them.

The change to enemy programming will likely be the biggest difference with this iteration of Skag Malibu compared to previous versions. This change will also be completely on the backend, so it ends up being a relief for me and unnoticeable for anyone else.

Metagression

The next changes are coming to the game's overall design. Not via programming but instead by a change in thought. My first plan is to reduce the length of levels. Levels in Demo 2 were around 3-5 minutes, which is pretty long for something that you are constantly moving through.

Most levels in the new Skag Malibu won't be exceeding 2 minutes. That is a lot shorter but it ensures that I don't end up padding out levels with uninteresting design just to make sure they feel "long enough". My thoughts are simple; Fun > Length. I'd rather have a short game that's worth the time than a game double the length and half the fun.

This reduction in scope will also be passing over to the levels themselves. My plan with the old Skag Malibu was to have unique level gimmicks for each level. While this is fantastic for variety, it also means for every level I need to make new assets for the art, sound, programming, and gameplay. As a single developer this is a massive time commitment and one that I don't think will be worth it in the end for me currently. So my plan is to reduce the amount of unique gimmicks in order to make this game come out on a somewhat realistic time schedule.

The result of this new thinking is a game that is much smaller in scope. It doesn't sound as grand as the original version, but once again I am a solo developer. This iteration of Skag Malibu is likely my narrowest game in scope, but that also gives it the best chance of becoming something.

I think that's about all I have for this week. Since it was mostly system work I didn't have much to talk about other than future plans, but that will change in the coming weeks. Thanks for reading.