I am making an ughlike
A what?
The story starts a couple of days ago, when I had finally finished designing and balancing the final levels of my next game. Someone in a stream chat asked me about my game, and when I described it as a cross between Balloon Fight and a 2D Crazy Taxi, they said...
"That sounds like Space Taxi for the old 8-bit computers"
They meant it as a compliment, not an accusation of my game being a ripoff, but I immediately went and looked into it. It turns out that they weren't wrong! I hadn't heard of Space Taxi until then, but it's a 1984 game for the Commodore 64 about mastering your 2D flying controls so you can efficiently drive customers to their destinations:
And here's my new game about mastering your 2D flying controls so you can efficiently carry packages to their destinations:
Oops. I wish I knew that Space Taxi existed before I had finished all of the code and design work on my new game, if only so I could have taken inspiration from it (more on that later in this email). But it's still interesting to see the similarities and differences between the two games. Although they are both about ferrying objects back and forth using a 2D flying machine, there are some pretty big differences.
The movement and controls feel completely different, but other than that, the biggest difference is the overall pacing and feel. Space Taxi is a much slower game, has a fuel gauge instead of a time limit, and puts emphasis on carefully maneuvering a large vehicle and making a gentle landing when you reach your destination, whereas my game is all about moving quickly and hurling packages at mailboxes as hard as you possibly can. It feels like Space Taxi was inspired by the old 1979 Lunar Lander arcade game, whereas I was inspired by fast-paced games like Balloon Fight, Crazy Taxi and various 2D arena shooters, so we both ended up approaching the same concept (delivering items in your 2D flying machine) from two very different viewpoints.
Anyway, it turns out that in the early 90s, someone made slightly faster paced Space Taxi-style game for the Amiga called "Ugh!", which is about a caveman. I'm not sure why 95% of European games from that era were about cavemen; I don't make the rules.
This means that out of all of the hundreds of thousands of videogames that have ever been made in the history of the world, the closest game to the one that I'm currently making is called "ugh". It sort of feels like a time traveler went back in time to pull an elaborate prank on me. But at least my friends are having fun calling my game an "ughlike".
So overall, I'm not too worried by the fact that I have unknowingly been making an ughlike this entire time. The games feel extremely different to play, and I'm mostly just relieved that there's proof that people out there would buy a game with a weird concept like this, albeit people from the 80s and early 90s. And now that know these games exist, I can take inspiration from them.
What I learned from existing ughlikes
When I was watching footage of these ughlikes (Space Taxi and Ugh), the main thing I noticed was that they still looked fun to play and had plenty of challenge, even without a time limit. I'm a huge fan of the time limit in my game and I feel like a lot of the fun comes from trying to navigate the levels as quickly as possible, but there would still be a lot of fun in there even if the time limit was removed.
There's a surprisingly large number of people out there who refuse to play any game that has a time limit, and I had always assumed that there's no way I would be able to make my game work for them. But these games inspired me to give it a try, so I spent a couple of days implementing and testing Relaxed mode. This mode removes the time limit, replacing it with a limit to how many times you can damage the packages that you're delivering. Although I personally prefer the standard way of playing the game, I still have a lot of fun in Relaxed mode and I'm glad that people who get stressed out by time limits will be able to play.
So that's what I've been doing this week. I've also been playtesting the game a lot, to make sure that the difficulty curve feels right and that Relaxed mode is as fun as it can be. I can now finally say that all of my programming and design work on the game is complete (unless I find something else that needs doing...), so my next job is to finally start making some music and drawing some cutscene character portraits. I'm looking forward to it!
Chessplosion is in the Steam sale by the way!
Just a reminder that you can save 50% on Chessplosion on Steam and itch.io until Tuesday morning (10AM PST). So if you know anyone who wants the game, now is a good time to tell them about it. See you next week!