so yeah, i published harajuku oniichan on itch. it's the second thing i made while refactoring my JS codebase, after feeding neko-tan and quite a leap forward in terms of functionality, umu umu
the mechanics are kind of dumb and uninteresting, you walk around the screen, dash and shoot at cows. i feel like it would have been an OK base for an actual small game, but it's still more of a toy. i could have easily added an actual map and some stages to clear, but i didn't want to spend too much time on it.
for what it is, i think i actually learned some stuff from coding it, or rather some things aligned in my head after publishing it, which is why i wanted to write this post-mortem.
the number one thing i learned is that after like 10 years of doing this shit i am finally at a stage where coding certain game mechanics has become somewhat frictionless for me.
again "oniichan" is very dumb, the logic is trivial and a lot of stuff could be improved
BUT
this was the first time i was coding a game from scratch where i sat down with a specific scope in mind for all the mechanics, and then just coded it out in a few hours without getting stuck once.
i remember it didn't use to be like this. i am a slow learner when it comes to coding, and i used to struggle even with the most basic stuff.
it took me a lot of time until i got my head around things like asynchronously loading content, handling game states, implementing particles, sprite animations etc.
it's nice to know that i'm in a place where this has all become part of my comfort zone.
the number two thing i learned (or re-learned at least) is that being able to code mechanics like these is the easy part :))) it's actually harder to DESIGN game mechanics in such a way that they feel satisfying
i would say lovingly that the interactions in "harajuku oniichan" feel pretty UNsatisfying. maybe with the exception of the shake effect and the cows exploding, there is a bit of a feeling of things being suspended in a void, interactions lack energy and impact.
i think this could be improved a lot with relatively small changes, but you need to be able to SEE this stuff first to implement it, and that is probably what i would work on next if i wanted to make an actual shooter.
that i guess is the SAUCE, the arcane art of GAME DESIGN which most of the people around me practice, and which has been eluding me until now. i'd probably sit down, play some games in the genre and try to figure out what they do and why that works. then i'd try to build on that and add something to my own games.
the number three thing i learned, however, is that making purely mechanics-based games is not necessarily super interesting for me at the moment.
i mean it was fun stitching together "oniichan" in a few hours with throwaway code that i'm never coming back to, but i would need much more of an incentive to work on an actual complete small game.
i can totally see how trying to design crunchy game mechanics could be interesting to people, i get the appeal. i just feel that for me, i would have to add some story element in there to make things more fun for myself, and dumber. crack a few stupid jokes, break the 4th wall, add some story beats about how rocks are formed or something.
i think this is the thing that was missing for me when i was working on my earliest games. compared to my story-based games like office onna or trial of you or even high council chair, earlier games i made that didn't have a story element felt hollow to work on. i feel like i could spend endless time on the mechanics, but i still would not fall in love with the game in the end.
i'm not sure what the next thing i make is going to be, maybe it's also going to be just a small toy for now. maybe a tiny platformer or dungeon crawler. not sure.
i just know that when i sit down to actually make a game, i need to have a storyline that i like. something that will give me enough drive to get through the development process so that i can see and appreciate the end result.
that's it i guess, that's the stuff that i was able to process while making oniichan: while i like playing mechanics-based games, i prefer making story based games. should be easy enough for me to remember.
thanks for reading this entry, i return to the goblin mines now, and will emerge with a new thing probably shortly, maybe. much love, mata ne
PS. if you play "harajuku oniichan", listen for the little distorted "euoh" that oniichan makes when colliding with a cow. that's my first (uncredited) voice line in a video game!!! i am still thinking of voice acting, i'll try harder for that next year and maybe record some lines that have consonants in them who knows