17/06/22 - Everything new in Alpha v5

I just released the 5th alpha version of my Android game Infinite Treasure (download here). This devlog will talk about the changes it makes to the game and the design decisions behind them.

To recap what Infinite Treasure is, it's a casual mobile game in which you collect sets of items of different rarity across an infinite world. Here's a screenshot:

There are 3 feelings or themes that I'm experimenting with in the game.

1. Discovery: the original theme of the game, one that seems to be getting diluted with each release as I lean more into the other two. This is the feeling of "wow, I just found a super-rare item!". The game mechanic most aligned with this is somewhat hidden: "Mythic" items that will only be found every hour or so of exploration. These offer no reward besides a position on a leaderboard of "most Mythic items found"
2. Relaxation: there is something therapeutic about mindlessly scrolling around a world collecting sets of items, supported by bright colours and encouraging sound effects. The game currently facilitates this feeling through its "Relax Mode", which has no objective or time limit, just a never-ending series of what are effectively fetch quests
3. Challenge: traversing the world and collecting items efficiently requires an element of skill. I wanted to foster a competitive element with players seeking to beat their own and each others' high scores. This is embodied by "Challenge Mode", which gives players 2 minutes to score as many points as possible, with rarer items earning more points. Speed and accuracy is rewarded with an increasing score multiplier

Alpha v5 focuses on improving two things in Infinite Treasure: usability and "share-ability". Here are the changes introduced:

1. Onboarding: I talk about this in more depth in this devlog. I wanted to streamline the player's first experience with the game, just giving them two choices when they first open it: "I want to relax" and "I want a challenge". Either of these takes them straight into gameplay, with a short explanation of each mode before they start. The goal here is to reduce player confusion early on and help them "find the fun" ASAP
2. New art! I've started working with a talented artist I found on Fiverr called Valeriia (her Fiverr page). As a software engineer, my art skills are lacking, and I wanted to replace my crappy placeholder art with something that would catch the attention of my target audience: casual gamers. My goal is to create a "vertical slice" where an entire level has "finished" art that I can make a video of and share on platforms like TikTok. I gave Valeriia one donut to create as a trial - she did great with that so I asked her to draw the entire set for Level 2 ("the donut level" - name TBD!). Here's how they look:
   
3. Guiding Light reward: one piece of feedback I've received from players is "I don't know which direction to go". This is fair enough - you can go in any direction forever in this game and no direction is better than any other. "Guiding Light" is a power-up that adds waypoint markers on the edge of the screen to show you the direction of the nearest rare item:
   
   Here's how it's used in each game mode:
   1. In Relax Mode, you get 5 waypoints as a reward for completing a set of items. This is meant to give players an incentive to keep chasing the next goal and extend their play time
   2.  In Challenge Mode, you always have a waypoint to the nearest rare item. As Challenge Mode always starts at the same world position, this helps players identify optimal routes to the highest value items and to higher scores. I want players to discover strategies for this mode and Guiding Light acts as a tool to (a) avoid the feeling of being directionless and (b) aid that route discovery process
4. Rewards page. I need help with two things: getting feedback and finding play-testers. I now have an in-game means of rewarding people who provide that help: Guiding Light! I added a page in the game where players can earn 24 hours of "enhanced" Guiding Light by either emailing me some feedback or sharing a link to the game on Twitter. This might seem like "share to win" as the reward gives you increased waypoints, but it's something that will ultimately help me improve the game
5. Improved animations and sound effects: another piece of feedback I've received is "I'm not sure what effect my actions are having". I've tried to bring the in-game UI to life and have it react more to your actions . Here are a few ways I did this:
   1. Make score displays "pop" when you collect an item. On completing a goal, the star count does a little spin:
      
   2. In Challenge Mode, make the score for each item you collect float up to the score counter at the top, which "pops" in response:
   3. In Challenge Mode, you get punished whenever you miss: the score multiplier goes down. This wasn't obvious to players before, so to make this clearer, the score multiplier now shakes side-to-side and the item collection sound is played in reverse

I'd love to know what you think of the game and how I can improve it - if you have an Android phone, give it a try! I want to make this game the best it can possibly be and can't do that without your feedback and insights. I'm incredibly grateful to anyone who plays the game and reaches out to talk about their experience with it.

Cheers!

James