Thinking about interesting choices...

So I'm definitely developing Stink Bug from the bug's point of view. I decided this by tossing a coin before I went to class last night. Glad I've gone with this - when I pitched the game, people seemed to respond well to the concept...

Last night we also chatted in class about interesting choices in games. We had to form small groups and discuss an interesting choice from the game we were developing. I talked about the idea of having two bug options at the start - one that flies faster and looks nice and shiny but the birds were seriously attracted to it. The other bug (probably more of a beginner bug?) was brown and a bit ugly, and flew slowly, but the birds could barely see it. After talking about it I decided I liked the idea, so I'm going to try to include it. Have to tweak it in development so there's no obvious optimal choice.

So now I've been thinking about other interesting choices in the game as well as other reward concepts. I played Zuma again this morning and was reminded that the more points you get, the more lives you get. Should I make it the more points you get the more trees grow? Or does that just happen if you live long enough, more food sources appear? Should you get more lives for earning more points?

Then I started thinking - how do you avoid the birds, once they've got a lock on you? Maybe that's where the defensive mechanism comes in - you have to stop somewhere, aim and squirt at them. If you hit them, you survive - if not, you die. You get a limited number of squirters at the start but can accrue them by earning points.

So, every time you pass X points, you get a new squirter. A new tree grows every Y minutes you stay alive.

Then I was also thinking, trees in the orchard should be random, to add More of an interesting unpredictability to the game - you can have orange trees (fruit worth most), lime trees (lots of fruit worth less points) or lemon trees (fruit worth less points). The lower levels or easier versions would have a higher proportion of orange trees.

A strategy could be to drain and kill the Lemon trees to make room for another tree that could be orange. But does that fit with the sustainability message? Not really. hmmm. But maybe , going back to the over fishing analogy, lemons are like an introduced species e.g. Carp in the Murray River, and it's good to catch them and kill them as they are messing up the water/orchard?

I'll think about that one. Time to go back to the tutorials...