What is this about?

Tactical finesse and arcade fun, this is how I would describe the classical game of Archon which I played massively back then on my C64.

The game is build from 2 basic actions: The chessboard where you move your units and an arcade scene where you battle each other in 1v1 when units are moving on the same tile.

If you are not familiar with Archon or you want to read up more about the details, pay a quick visit to Wikipedia and read it up.

Recently I stumbled across a remake of this game on Steam and gave it a try. It was kinda the fun had in mind but it also didn't offer much new content. It is simply a polished up version - agree, a pretty much polished up version. Though I am still missing the modern multiplayer PvP aspect in here. It also offers local co-op as the original does but what about network playing? And why not offer a little more variety?

How everything started

Ok, we'll take a short break from looking at Archon and talk about my motivation on this project. I have been playing around with Unity since early 2016 now. After going through the basic tutorials and having some training I started creating games from the ideas I had in mind. There was nearly everything from text adventure to 2D to 3D. They were all good ideas and they all shared 2 important features:

• I had a lot of fun working on them
• I never finished one of them

I guess most of you can relate to this meme^^

At the beginning of 2019 I was looking at this big folder of ideas on my hard drive and came to exactly this conclusion and made a plan

I will work on a project
and I will finish it.

Ok, plan was set. Next on my list was to figure our what game I will be doing but most importantly analyse why I never finished one before. I decided to start with the last question first.

Finishing a game is hard

Looking back at all the little projects that are flying around and analysing how they progressed I could see a pattern. It was fun kickstarting an idea and getting into it. It was challenging to figure out the technical details and learn new skills required for them. Playing the single iterations of the game fun, seeing it grow and feeling how it evolves. Capturing videos, sharing it with my friends and getting their opinions is cool. But over time all those projects came to a sudden end, because I had a new idea that I wanted to try out.

Playing around with a new idea is also a lot more fun then digging into the topic of game design to refine my ideas or browsing the asset stores for graphics that I can use to make the game visually appealing. If you want to show it to your friends, it has to look cool, or not? It also appeared to me, that I never thought upfront about the games that I created. I just started with a basic catch like: "Hey, I want to do terrain building and have fun" or "2D platformer sounds exiting, let's build one". And this is most likely the origin of why I never finished one of the games. I never planned to have one anyway!

Second thing I realised: I like to get lost in technical decisions and implementations. Make everything the right way, apply refactorings, use external libraries etc... This can be time consuming and it easily distracts from making progress on the game itself. While focussing on the implementation you won't see anything visually evolving which easily turns into frustration and also makes it easier to have a fresh start with a new project.

Make it right next time

Having those 2 conclusions in mind I wanted to find a way to finish a project. In order to finish a project I should first make a plan and decide how I want to finish and how you can decide if it is finished. And before I start, I also need to know what I will be doing.

Eventually I came up with the idea of implementing the game of Archon. This game has always been fun for, it saves me thinking about too many game design problems but also offers some variety to dive into while working on the game. That said, I set up a document and wrote down what I had in mind. I took some days to re-iterate on the document, discussed my idea with friends and looked up articles about the original game and its successors. I tried hard to keep my ideas as close to the original game as possible to limit myself in scope. In the end I want to finish a project and not build the best selling game ever.

To cope also with the issue of technical design challenges I decided to not care about perfect solutions. Instead I accepted that the code can become unmaintainable and that it can contain bugs and not all edge cases are covered - if any at all. I also defined that this will be a prototype only. It's purpose will be to prove that the game is still fun and not a blinded memory of mine from the 80s.

Executing a plan

I created a project plan on Trello and put all the steps I defined in it. I didn't add any deadlines though since I am still working on it in my free time.

What's next?

But now what is next? In my original plan I would take this prototype - after I confirmed it is fun - and convert it to a real game. But I am still stuck on a few questions that I want to sort out for myself before I really pick it.

It has been a while now that all of that happened. I went through the first milestones and created a prototype that is playable - and buggy - and is fun. I documented a few of my development iterations and uploaded them to YouTube for share: 

PC or Mobile

My prototype was designed to be played with either keyboard or controller. And that works. But my heart would try to long for mobile. This is the way if you have a small game that you want to share with ohters. It is easier to deploy something to the app stores than trying to distribute through steam or the likes. But how to do good mobile controls? Still have to figure out.

Progression layer

The game itself was designed as arcade game. You play the strategic layer, you fight the battles - over and over again. The only progression layer here is your increase in skill when playing this game. My assumption is that this is not enough for the majority of players. So how can this game be enriched with a progression layer? Still have to figure out.

Conclusion

I am unsure if I will or when I will continue this project but looking back at what I achieved from I planned, I am really proud of myself. Once the story continues, I will let you know.

So a little bit of clickbait with the title of the article since I obviously didn't finish what I started but my approach brought me a lot further than any try before: Have an idea, make a plan, execute and release.

Thank you for reading until the end. Happy to read your comments.