Release!

2 weeks ago, I decided out of the blue to start getting up earlier. Specifically I would try to get up at 5am everyday. This gave me a lot of free time, and I have used this extra time in the morning to work on small prototypes that I would upload to Itch.io. The reason I wanted to do this was because I have yet to release anything. Not for lack of skill, but because I just don't have any good ideas. Or at least no ideas that I could reasonably finish within a decade by my self. So I figure, if I release 1-2 prototypes a week, chances are one of them should be good enough to flesh out into a full game.

I think I am closer to a good idea with this Slinger Defense than my 4 previous ones. I was actually having a lot of fun playing this game while developing it, and therefore have put a lot more effort into this one. The other 4 I "finished" and released the same day I started working on them or an hour or 2 into the next day. Where as this one I have been working on for about 5-6 days now. Not too long I know, but I'm speaking relatively here. 

One big difference with this game, is I didn't just stop after the main mechanic was implemented. I actually added an upgrade screen and occasional powerups. I guess I did have powerups in my ball bouncer game, but they were fairly useless and end up ultimately breaking the game, once you increase the ball size to half the size of the screen... Of course having multiple powerups in your game, make it exponentially harder to balance as you add more, and balance is still something I need to work on for this game.

The second difference, is polish. I experimented with Unity's post processing for first time and used the bloom effect for the nuclear blast powerup. I also used it much more subtly along with the film grain effect for when you get hurt. The second bit of polish that I have never done before, was sound effects. They aren't very good because I had no idea what I was doing, but I managed to create some alright sound effects using Audacity which involved me slapping my head mic on the desk then warping the sound. I didn't touch music though... I will let my much less tone deaf brother handle that...

In conclusion, I think the game's development went well, and I am excited to continue my game dev path. I hope to make many more protoypes and games in the future. 

Thank you for reading!