Warp7 is an endless arcade space game where your only spaceship must warp seven times within seven minutes. You travel through seven weird regions of space towards the final warp gate where you pause to apply microchips(upgrades) to you spaceship.

Project info

Warp7 was initially meant to be an intense action space game that containted the lessons learned from my 2017 space game Obliterator but with much more focus on action and less focused on physics, missions and solar systems. The other aim was to combine my improved understanding of game design with much bigger, brighter, neon, almost 1980s aestheic and really make something easy to pick up but difficult to navigate (but only metaphorically) and respectful of players' time.

From the start I wanted a game with a sense of progression and player choice but with some randomess and challenge. I still think there is a way to have all the elements of procedural-type games but with all the wank taken out and with the choices for the player to feel as though they are choosing from a range of positives (as opposed to choosing the least negative).

I also wanted much less punishment from dice roll fuckovers that is still the du jour component, it seems, (indie) game designers. The randomness in Warp7 is not that noticeable and that's the point: when you fail it's got a lot more to do with your skill than a shit value on a random function call. An unfair insult that can be thrown at Warp7 is that it is rogue-something. Fuck off. It is better than that.

Development started in June 2020 and was interrupted first by another video game project and then by the death of my mum from Covid at the end of 2020 and then the hassle of moving house and starting a new job. It was then further interrupted by smaller games while I figured out how to streamline the gameplay and settle into my new life.

Timeline milestones (simplified)

• June to July 2020 - initial code
• August 2020 to August 2021 - life shit, other games
• September to October - gameplay, art, UI
• November - levels and improvements
• December 2021 - life shit (more but different)
• January 2022 - last changes

Tech used

• Unity (C#)
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Audacity

What went well

Art/Style

I settled on a neon glow, 1980s, secondary colour aesethic for Warp7 and it worked really well. Colour wise I yet again went for the player blue (0, 255, 255) and really need to stop doing that. But it worked and played off against the orange, green and purple/pink for the levels.

I aimed for simplification as much as possible, opting for clarity over texture or detail allowing the intense colours and glows to do a lot of work. Unity's 2D lights helped here too...while the spaceship seemed really suited to the heavy metal surface I created that the lights placed off. Glows were mostly sprites although there the 2D lights do some work, but sparingly so it's space not a dark disco room!

UI

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The UI was the first element of Warp7 I drew in my notebook and it was never actually used in game! I found the original idea of something that wooshed and faded nauseating, too slow to appear and vanish, a waste of CPU and rendered looking at the ship pointless (a duplication or even triplcation of information).

Instead I went with a larger, cleaner, toggle UI and incorporated elements of the necessary information on the spaceship - for example, the more intense the shields blink the fewer you have, the ship has functional lights, the trails tell you about speeding and direction (takes a bit of getting use to but it's more intuitive than a gyroscope and/or decimal numbers).

I'm very pleased with the streamlined nature of the UI and how the flow feels immediate i.e. from title screen into game play then back to upgrades and back into game.

Game Design

In many ways Warp7 seven is the sharpest and cleanest game design I've done. I resisted many urges to just keep adding and instead kept it tight, concentrated on moment to moment with no needless travelling moments or waiting for things to happen. I also concentrated a lot of controls and having a good link between action and response.

But the tight game design created a sharper need for good level design to go with the progression system and subtle randomness.

What went ok

Upgrade System

Although I wanted to leave every upgrade option unlimited to do so would make the upgrades silly/powerful and so the hard choices were: (a) maximum upgrades (what I opted for); (b) stingy amount of microchips; (c) miniscule (i.e. near non-impactful) upgrades; or (d) expensive upgrades.

I liked the openness of the progression despite the hard maximum limits and while nothing is blocked off, the incremental cost of upgrades provides a consequence to choosing an upgrade path that is not immediately apparent. I wanted to avoid a specific upgrade tree system but wonder if Warp7 as is makes it clear enough that the player is in total control and spending your microchips requires more thought than perhaps it is first apparent.

I also allowed not forcing the player to use upgrades at once and - perhaps in the wrong place - implemented a system to allow a skill reset at a cost of a percentage of current microchips.

Unity 2D Lights

Using an experimental system that was almost coming into production was a good thing as I got to use a feature for great effects. Yet I still hit an occasional glitch and have had to skirt around a bit as well as well become and instant expert on making even the most basic render pipeline more efficient.

What went badly

Level Design

I struggled - yet again - with level design from a conceptual standpoint and from a theme standpoint (i.e. making the levels distinct in the three categories and yet related to the concept). One of the lessons I have finally learnt from making Warp7 is that I am going to move towards systems/rule based games for a bit as the level design part always seems the hardest, longest, and least satisfying. And I don't feel as though I'm good at level design.

Project timeline

Shit happened in the wider world and in my private life.

Future

Onwards to the next game.