Development summary/Postmortem for Coral Song

What major changes happened between the original idea and the final product?

k1nc: The question around biodiversity was an element that was hard to navigate around. How does one represent the complexity of ecological systems within gameplay? There was some intention of having the parrotfish be an initial aggressor of our growing reef, but with time, be an established part of the ecosystem, supporting maybe even 'automating' the maintenance of your reef. Simultaneously there was hope to have other initial aggressors like the crown-of-thorns starfish, which could have later been mediated by its own predators when your reef starts attracting other species of marine life.

Similarly, the coral system at present, is an automated process, there were initial hopes of thinking how varying parameters could have influenced the ways different kinds of corals could grow. How fluctuations in light and temperature could attract different coral types, allowing the player to think through the necessary mix particular coral types would need.

There was also hope of folding external political pressure that was taking place in the narrative to affect the gameplay itself. At this juncture the narrative serves more as an emotional stimulus, but it would have been nice to have enacted some change in gameplay upon narrative development.

sweeyee3: The biggest curveball we faced was for sure to toss out the 1st idea about trying to balance between the use of fossil fuel vs green energy. For me, I thought the mechanics for the game had potential in how deep it can go but ultimately we could not find the connection between corals and the oil rig which was something our writer really wanted to explore.

TylerIsland: I would say the main changes we made to our idea would be in managing the scope of the game. Given that we were all learning something new (learning the godot engine, picking up programming/art), we had to cut our scope to what was achievable within the time we were able to set aside for the jam. 

zivankira: The game was initially meant to have a very structured grid, with corals being packed densely. However, it seemed hard to ensure that the collision zone of the player could only overlap with one object. We then decided to space things out a little more. Besides, it allowed each coral to stand out more visually.

What surprises did you find?

k1nc: Oil Rigs are surprising, the industry in and of itself, the infrastructure to support its development, but the lack of infrastructure and consensus around the decommissioning of an oil rig. It is quite easy to be against the violence that an oil rig represents, with its extraction of fossil fuels, and the continued violence the byproducts of that extraction enacts onto the environment. But after the initial research and reading of articles out there, that talk about the economic access that oil rigs have provided particular communities, and how the structures of oil rigs are supporting the maintenance of marine life, we were really surprised by the complexity that exists within and around the site of rigs.

Thinking about the influences of game music was as well a surprising endeavour for myself. Often we find ourselves getting influences from other games, but why don’t developers look outside of games for inspiration? I just wanted an excuse to fold kpop influences into game music, it led me down a momentary rabbit hole of how the NewJeans sound is produced, which led me to find out that some particular synthesiser sounds of NewJeans are actually played in reverse, which gives them a more expansive sound.

sweeyee3: With the new idea, I definitely enjoyed the concept more due to the positive vibe it brought and I had a few ideas on how I could play around with shader effects. However, I was concerned about the gameplay loop since it felt "too easy".

But to my surprise, the feedback was that defending the corals from fishes while clearing trash from the rig was not as easy as it seemed. So from a challenge perspective, that worked out. In terms of the design however, I do feel that it may not be a "fun" type of challenge so that could be something to improve on.

TylerIsland: Cliche as it is, I think I am quite pleasantly surprised at how the game turned out. Coming from a programming background, I am used to implementing ideas. Being on the creative end and seeing what I've created come to life was quite fulfilling, so props to my team members who all did great work to make the game what it is.

zivankira: Picking up Godot was surprisingly more intuitive than expected. As someone who’s relatively new to game programming, the inbuilt functions and node system of Godot definitely helped to make development smoother for me. 

Another surprise was that the simplicity of the game was not a bad thing. Based on some playtesters’ feedback, it turned out to be more fun than expected, especially in short bursts of play.

The biggest surprise of all, we managed to get overall 3rd place in the community voting for the development phase??? We as a team were flabbergasted and very much honoured.

What pitfalls did you navigate?

sweeyee3: Reflecting upon both of our ideas, I did think we overall made a good decision not to go with the 1st idea due to how complex it could be. It might have saved us the pain of having to scope down in the middle because with the 2nd idea, it started simple but complexity was added over time.

TylerIsland: Picking up digital art for the first time comes with its challenges and finding a working process to create the assets needed took some amount of experimenting. I also played around with animating in Krita, so getting it to look right also took some time.

zivankira: Managing the fish spawning was also an issue. If they spawned off-camera and ate the corals, players wouldn't be able to tell easily. A quick work around was to make the fishes despawn when they got out of view. However, this means that smarter players can just deal with fishes in a "out of sight, out of mind" playstyle. That was not intended. To deal with the above challenges, certain logics were put in place to bind the spawning area nearer to the player, so there is a higher chance that players would notice the fish. And when the fishes went out of view, they would only despawn if they were not actively eating a coral.

What were the hardest things to cut from your concept?

sweeyee3: There was not as much stuff that we had cut from our concept on the design side but on the part of VFX, I did find it a little sad not to be able to add things like visual effects for sounds/soundwaves and polishing existing effects like having lights during night time. But that was also partially how I approached this gamejam on not wanting to push too hard and panic implementing things.

zivankira: More enemy types. Creating and fine-tuning the fish spawning area logic and the fish behaviour logic took a good amount of time. It would be over ambitious to try and do the same for a different enemy type, especially since we planned for them to spawn and behave in a very different way. For example, we intended for the crown-of-thorns to climb up the rig from the seabed and start by consuming corals on the lowest level. Players would also have to spend time removing the starfish, instead of simply chasing it away like the parrotfish.

More interactions. Specifically between the corals and the fish. The largest-sized corals were initially planned to be “immune” to the fishes. This would have been represented by anemones or mantis shrimps “defending” the corals from the parrotfish. The unlucky fishes that went for the largest corals would be automatically chased away.

More visual indicators. Some additional UI that could have helped deal with the problem of fishes eating corals off-screen would be great. A simple arrow or alert icon pointing in the direction of the off-screen fish would alert players to the threat.

On top of that, as part of the thematic experience of a deep sea oil rig, if players were to try and venture below the third level of the rig, a warning icon for immense pressure could appear. This would be more immersive than having just an invisible boundary preventing players from going any deeper. To accommodate for the lack of this warning, we shortened the depth of the oil rig (from four levels to three) and raised the seabed accordingly.

TylerIsland: For art, I had more things I wanted to improve on and add, but had to prioritise due to work and personal life commitments. Like zivankira said, we had initial plans to add more enemies like the starfish, and that would also take more time on my end to draw and animate. I also would've wanted to add more coral types which come in 4 stages, so I think a good compromise was to make the corals come in multiple colours to add some variety.