Determining How Long Powerup Effects Should Last
Day 15 — Aspiring Game Creator
2D Game Dev: Galaxy Shooter
During this stage of building Galaxy Shooter, it’s impossible to decide upon the desired punch or duration of a power-up.
Some power-ups will always feel far too powerful during prototyping. It’s not until the Game Designer hat goes on, stories tied to level design and enemies and other deterrents put in place that a realistic determination should be made, after all, at this stage, this is simply just RNG fun play testing.
A crazy over powered power-up in the prototyping phase put in the hands of a designer may give the player the perfect sense of exhilaration and needed confidence when playing a level which completely favors the enemy.
The Triple Shot power-up against enemies spawning every second or two is crazy OP, but have a swarm of a dozen enemies attack, followed by another swarm, this invasion forces the player into survivability mode and then the power-up drops as orchestrated followed by another swarm of enemies, well, then defense turns to confident offense — IF — the power-up is retrieve and the player is overjoyed at having annihilated 50 enemies and survived a difficult part of the level!
