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Design principles

General guidelines​

  • Gameplay is king.
  • To be consistent with the rest of the game:
    • Prefer procedurally generated graphics over manually created graphics.
    • Prefer angular designs instead of curved designs.
    • Prefer abstract designs over realistic designs.

Gameplay advice​

Users will try to camp in the corners​

Corners reduce the exposure of the players' ships, so players will naturally tend to hide there. Either incentivize players to move by putting bonuses away from the corners, or de-incentivize players from staying there by spawning enemies there. The same thing applies (to a lesser extent) to level's borders.

Fair randomness​

If players have a very slim chance of getting a bonus that massively increases their score, the top of the leaderboard will be populated by people that were lucky, not by people that were skilled. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to keep in mind.

Be mindful of farming​

Ask yourself if it is possible for the player to accumulate a lot of points (or a lot of shields) simply by not triggering an event. For example, I once made a level where shields kept appearing until all enemies were killed. Some players discovered that by leaving one enemy alive, they could farm shields.