Team TBD developers' log

This is not a story-driven game.  Then again, neither was Bad Dudes for the original Nintendo. What's important is to provide some context for the player's actions. With some older games, many elements of the story had to be brought by the imagination of the players. Yes, obviously The "problem" with this type of arcade-level story is that it is inadequate for me on a personal level. I want compelling stories in games. I think the best games I've ever played have depth of lore and true value to exploration and discovery. So I wanted to at least include open-ended elements in this game's design where the player could imagine where the game would take them. So we typecast the player as a StarJacker -- the title of the game --  conjuring up 1980s retro-futurist glory (with main title art in the works). We put the player in the direct controller position, so he/she is not telling another character to move, but they themselves are operating the cockpi...

What do you think is happening at the end of the level? This is one of the questions we asked our players following the second in-class play-test event. For this version of the game, once the player successfully unlocked and pressed the launch button, they would see the following screen: Nearly every response included some variation of this sentiment: I have no idea. This was not exactly the sentiment I was going for in the level design. It's clear that something needed to be implemented to support the story, as thin as it is. The players did seem to remember the story pitch ("you are stealing a space ship") well enough to try to help answer this question with their own imagination. Yet, that wasn't going to cut it. After unlocking and pressing launch, we needed to communicate at least a few things: That the level was completed successfully That the player achieved his/her story goal of escaping with the ship That not all ships were the same every ...