Here Comes The Sun

Since Bandology first came into fruition in the Spring of 2007, the game has gone through so many different iterations and transformations, it's hard to say that it's the same game it was last year, let alone the same game it was a week ago.

After this last playtest, the team's morale was kind of down as we'd hit a brick wall in design. The gameplay itself was fun enough, but everything around it wasn't really working the way we wanted it. People weren't getting a sense of satisfaction when the game ended, namely because the game cut the player off before they could get to a point where they felt comfortable stopping. There were also problems with how random play was roughly equivalent to intelligent play; we've been trying since Day 1 to try to prevent this from happening, and after the last set of changes, this problem snuck up on us again. ARGLEBARGLE!

We sat down and looked hard at these problems (as well as many, many others) and came up with a number of different ways to tackle them.

1. The game is no longer limited by time. People didn't get a sense of satisfaction by only playing a gig for a certain amount of time. Getting to a point where you die lets you feel like you got somewhere, whereas ending the gig at 90 seconds just cuts you off.
2. There are levels (songs) to each gig. This is done so that the player gets a sense of achievement and progression as they play through each gig.
   
3. Levels get harder, so you can die! This gives players a better sense of how good they are, but also creates more excitement. The current version of our game has no pressure of dying, so it's kind of boring.
   
4. The metric of success is now what level you reach. What level each player gets to is now the goal of the game. Now the goal is staying alive to get to the next level, so all of those pieces we considered earlier this semester are more useful and make more sense.
5. Players can continue from where they left off (ish). Players are able to replay the gig from the first song, or they can restart from certain checkpoint levels such as level 3, level 6 etc. This allows them to not get frustrated/bored with having to start from the beginning all over again.
   
6. Gameplay elements are introduced with each level. New pieces/gameplay elements are introduced at specific songs/levels.
   
7. Difficulty. Levels get harder by giving more timer blocks, or blocks coming up from the bottom, and speed increases.
   
8. Passing a gig - Passing a gig at the moment consists of attaining some total band level. For instance, a bar might have a bar requirement of 20. One way to pass this gig is if each member of a 5-man band gets to level 4. Another potential ending point is if two people in the band get to level 10. Granted this would be really really difficult, but it'd be doable for someone who is incredibly skilled.
   
9. Katamari Damacy "Make-a-star" style - Once people pass the minimum requirement, they've "passed' the gig, but they're able to continue playing until the time frame has completed to get a high score.
10. Gigs still have real-time duration - For now, gigs are still set to a certain number of days to allow for casual play.
    
11. Powerups sent and received are tied to each level - All powerups sent during one player's level 1 can only be received and used during other player's level 1. The way that these powerups are given is based on point markers. Say player B gets to 50 points and at that point, player A got a grey breaker at point 45. The grey breaker is put into a stack for all of the other players.

It's a crazy number of changes to implement less than two weeks before soft opening, but we're making really solid progress already and everyone's kicking major butt. Keep your eyes peeled for more updates and changes. Thanks again for all of the support, feedback, and comments everyone's been giving us. We really and truly appreciate it. : )