The Last Acorn Devlog #1

Hey guys! 

This is really exciting for us to post our first-ever devlog for The Last Acorn! We've been developing this game for almost 6 months, but we have a long way to go before our vision for the future of this game is realized! Before I get into the meat of the devlog, I should probably introduce the game. How it started, what we are working on now, and where we're going. So let's get started.

The Beginnings...

The Last Acorn started as a class project for a game design class at Stanford. If you've ever spent any time on Stanford's campus, you'd know that squirrels are a cornerstone of life on campus. They run across the roads during the day (quite nerve-racking if you're biking to class), they randomly jump from tree to tree above you while you're studying, and you can sometimes hear them scampering around outside while in the quiet of your dorm room.

While, eventually, you learn to tune them out, I've always found them fascinating to watch as they maneuver around the trees and ground with haste and precision. It always looked like it would be so much fun to be a squirrel. And, as it turns out, movement requiring haste and precision makes for a damn fun platforming game. 

Since the project was for a class and it had a due date, we had to keep our scope narrow and restrict our movement set to three primary moves: jump, climb, and glide. With our concept beginning to be formed and many possibilities still swirling in our heads, we spent the first 4 weeks of development building, testing, and iterating. Luckily,  we had an amazing teaching staff giving us and constantly giving us amazing feedback as well as a bountiful supply of classmates to playtest our game.

By the end of the class, we had absolutely fallen in love with the game. Every person on our team had poured way more time than was required simply because we had so much fun doing and doing it together. I think that the passion and love we felt is incredibly evident in the version we turned in.

The Currents(?)...

Since finishing the class, development has been slow and steady. The first thing we did was begin developing more gameplay mechanics. Since I'm a developer, I started where I felt the most comfortable. I wanted to explore ways to increase the depth of the movement set, boost the variety of possible puzzles, and tweak the already existing mechanics to feel more flowy and connected. 

A classic way of increasing the difficulty of a movement-based game is to jack the fuck up out of the speed. So... I create the Wind Gust.

While I've only tested this mechanic and haven't yet built any levels or puzzles utilizing it, I've already had so much fun stretching the limits of what could be possible. It's feels so fun to fly around the map with drastically more speed and danger. We'll see if this has a place in the game but so far... so good.

As the level designer of the game, I could tell that the puzzles were quickly becoming conceptually repetitive. They all were based around the idea: "how do I get high enough to reach that branch with the acorn". With the answer almost always being: "Just climb higher". This is great for the beginning levels, but let me tell you, once you do it enough it gets really fucking boring. So I knew that the next mechanic would have to be a way for the player to skillfully get vertical momentum and height. BOOM! Vine.

I really love this mechanic. I think it is a perfect progression from the puzzles you see in level 4 and level 5, where you have to glide a great distance and perfectly time your climb input on a tree. Plus it's just fun.

Although  I have added a ton of other mechanics and changes to the game, I'm still on Summer break so the last thing I want to do is write a whole ass essay. I'll have to slowly and methodically leak details to generate maximum interest in my game, which is essentially unknown to most people.

If anyone is reading this... Hey. What's up. I'll post next week. You should come by again and see if I've made any progress :). 

For my next post, I'll outline what I have envisioned for the future structure of the game, narrative, and mechanics because I want to compare and contrast how similar the final version is to my current plan.

Anyway... Bye!