Choice, Part 1

Difficulty levels are a curious thing - if a player is within a certain range of skill level they can easily find one that’s right for them and have fun without worry.

If you’re like me however, stuck in a weird middleground where difficulty levels are either too easy or too hard, well… you have a problem.

Today I’d like to provide a small glimpse into how I’m planning to tackle this issue.

Can one size fit all?

As mentioned above I’m in a bit of a bind when it comes to preset difficulty levels in games.
I usually tend to hover between ‘hard’ and ‘very hard’ options with neither of them being exactly what I’m looking for. This often ends with a rather subpar experience, held back by a few minor annoyances that could be easily mitigated if given a choice.

Partially because of that and partially because I grew up with games where modding was reasonably easy I became someone who really values choice and ability to tailor the experience to their own needs.
This approach made me come up with a… let’s call it a pledge: “if I ever release a game, I’m going to make it as customizable as possible”.

It’s something I kept in mind with every single one of the prototypes I worked on throughout the years and now, with a public release of a project, I’m finally able to put it to the test.

My very own difficulty

If you played the current version (Prototype 1) of Blockade of Gopher Keep you might be surprised with what I just wrote. Customizable difficulty? Where?

Well, it’s coming. With the initial version my main focus was to polish what I had and post it online so I doesn’t end up as another project left forgotten like many before it. With Prototype 2 however things are about to get more interesting.

Difficulty editor, work in progress.

While, as a block breaker game, my project isn’t too complicated gameplay wise, there’re still multiple things that can be modified to affect player experience. Those settings are:

• maximum and starting amount of lives
• ball speed
• release angle selection speed
• minimum, maximum and starting paddle sizes

These seven values can be used to tailor the difficulty to whatever you like and will hopefully allow anyone to enjoy the game - no matter their skills or experience.

Default doesn’t mean bad

Besides the ability to create custom difficulty settings, there are also three default presets to choose from for anyone who doesn’t want to tinker with anything. As mentioned before, the key idea here is choice.

These default presets will probably change a lot throughout the development but even their initial versions should be varied enough to provide noticable difference in difficulty.

Small demostration of differences between difficulty levels, work in progress.

Conclusion

This is just a start.
I have some additional ideas about what other aspects of the game could be used for difficulty balancing and exposed to allow for further customization but that’s something that still needs more planning, coding and testing.

Besides, gameplay isn’t the only thing that can affect player experience, is it?

See you in part 2! ヾ(・ω・*)