Successes:

We managed to increase game complexity while retaining simplicity of controls. Adding the swipe-based shield mechanic also added a nice bit of variation in player-enemy interaction which aided overall game-feel. Since the swipe direction is similar to the tapping, both shooting and shielding feel similar enough to not add too much difficulty outside of enemy-type identification; The final look of the game was exactly as we intended and matching the UI to the sprites we used made the final 8bit-look really come together. The final mapping also feels progressive and the user feels rewarded for paying attention to the beat.

Challenges: 

 Mapping in general was something that needed constant improvement. Though the final result turned out well, creating the mechanism to not only generate maps that had enemies spawning at the right times but finalizing the code to properly read the maps was equally challenging. Taking difficulty into account with all the different mechanisms when mapping was also a challenge since simply adding extra speed or different colors/directions felt drastic at times.

Overall sticking to the simplistic layout of a stationary player, 4 cardinal directions, and a binary color system became hard when trying to make each level feel inherently different. Even though it's all the same ‘experience’ we wanted the user to learn new skills and rapidly improve over time. To do this, extra care in the development and introduction of mechanics was needed What You Learned

Touch detection and lots of general IOS development skills was a big point of learning. None of our group members came in this project with experience in Unity’s Iphone development so every new mechanic added was a new experience which came with a whole new host of challenges. But ultimately that led to lots of improvements and learning. 

Balancing in-game time to perform certain actions in time with the beat was also a huge point of learning. Since detecting the beat and performing actions in-time are essential skills for any game with a rhythm component, we all took the time to develop and understand this aspect of the project.

Finger placement and input is also incredibly important, as it can make an otherwise easy level a lot harder. Enemies could get blocked by the player’s finger, and requiring some time to be taken to switch colors adds urgency to the level. This definitely required a lot of testing to make the levels feel smooth and fair.

Possible Future Revisions:

Although we were able to get the basic mechanics and gameplay down, there were several aspects of the game that we wanted to add but were not able to due to time constraints and limitations. One of the ideas we had was to add a big final-boss enemy as a way to increase the complexity of enemy mechanics. However, we felt that adding a boss enemy felt a bit out of place for our game, since a stationary player becomes just a sitting duck once faced with an enemy too strong - we had to think of more complicated ways to ensure balance and consistency. Though we value the simplicity of the game as a whole, we would like to also add more user and enemy mechanics on the whole. Currently, we really just have the basics of the player being able to face one of 4 directions and shoot bullets at enemies, and enemies just spawn in towards the player. Some ways to amp this up and add more flair to the mechanics would be to have enemies able to move in multiple directions and locations. Adding mechanics to reduce linearity and break the pattern set up in earlier songs would be nice as well. Something that incorporates all areas of the game screen and has enemies spawn in from any location would be cool to implement. This probably means that then we would add to player movement and have the player rotate in any direction and at any angle. This could be possible with some sort of similar tapping or dragging input from the player. Additionally, for more difficult levels/songs, adding enemies that shoot back would break up the predictable structure.

Finally, we also considered some game-state changes like powerups and a reward system for the player, which would provide a sort of incentive and make the game feel more interactive. For instance, when the player reaches a certain score, they receive a certain amount of health back. Or if they kill a certain number of enemies in a row, they receive some reward. In general, we would want to work on just adding more depth to the level designs and building on what already exists, so introducing more songs, more levels, more mechanics, etc.