🫡 Greetings, Astroracers and Game Dev Enthusiasts

Welcoming the First Skypilots

Even more exciting than kicking off this project was the arrival of the first playtesters, aka Skytesters and handing out the very early 0.0.1 version. With minimal promotion, I reached out to find a few willing Astroracers who joined the Discord. I also surprised family and friends with test sessions by just handing them my Playdate. Some Skypilots were very dedicated already and provided amazing feedback that kept me busy and helped to refine the overall vision a lot.

Discord Invite Linke

First Feedback and Conclusions

This feedback already shaped the course of the game. Here are a few learnings and conclusions based on the feedback I got so far:

• Small levels are more interesting for quick repetitions and therefore more conducive to high score hunting. Initially, I planned to have quite large levels, thinking it would make the game more interesting and might even spark the desire for exploration. However, with this feedback, I’ll shift more towards a high score-oriented style. The final version will have a good mix of different styles.
• Players expressed a desire for guided progression instead of just being able to select levels. This didn’t come as a big surprise, but getting this confirmation focused me on adding a kind of map that unlocks new levels as you progress.
• The controls and playstyle really aren’t for everyone. I highly underestimated how unintuitive the no-gravitation behavior is and how confusing only forward thrust can be to players who have never played Asteroids or something similar. I’m afraid this is just something I have to live with. I assumed this might be a pick-up-and-play game for all ages and skill levels. However, it seems that it is a bit harder to pick up for less experienced gamers.

With advancing versions, I’ll promote the game a bit more and invite more Skytesters to the Discord. Eventually, with enough racers, I might organize a league, but I’m not sure how feasible this might be without an official highscore implementation (which requires a successful submission to Panic’s Catalog).

A big thanks goes to everyone who played the game and especially those who took the time to provide feedback.

Refining the Scope

How many levels. How many ships. How long should the playtime be. Is a highscore enough, or does the game need different play styles?

All these questions and others were driving me crazy. My goal is to get the game into the Catalog, and checking on other games is only somewhat helpful because they vary a lot. Also, it depends on the submission time since the quality is increasing with newer games.

I decided to go for three themes and flying styles with five levels each. Depending on the styles, they will unlock toward harder levels in that style.

So, for example, if you beat the first narrow and slow level, it will unlock a harder one that requires that skill. Since there will be different forks, you might focus on the fast-paced levels and progress there.

Race Track Themes

1. Asteroid Fields: Narrow and very tricky. Going fast here means certain death. Sharp turns and precise maneuvers are the key to victory.
2. Skyforges: Many skyforges aren’t operating anymore, so they’re used for illegal races. Since these were never meant to be raced in, the tracks can be absurd and might require precision but also allow going fast here and there. A very dangerous combination. Many Astroracers have lost their lives by not finding the right balance.
3. Astrorace Tracks: That’s where the pros race. Official and designed for going as fast as possible. Turns are usually wider, but considering the speed you’ll be packing, it won’t make it easier. The rescue teams are at the ready, but considering that crashes have a 99.9% fatality rate, they’re less busy than the cleaning crews.

Beyond that, you’ll be able to unlock three ships in addition to the first one. They will differ visually, have different sound effects, and of course, distinguished flying behaviors. These behaviors will focus on the mentioned themes, allowing you to reach the best times with the correctly chosen ship.

Performance

Developing for the Playdate is a constant and kind of beautiful battle with performance. Adding a few tiles to your spritesheet might be exactly what’s needed to drop your FPS already by a bit. Of course, I didn’t notice that before filling my exported sheets to the maximum. And then I kept wondering how the FPS rate could have dropped by 10.

Coming from console and PC development, the idea of a few bytes causing actual FPS drops is something to get used to. But it does force lean development and scrapping things that, in the end, might not have been as important anyway.

In game development, the saying “Restrictions help creativity” (or something like that) is quite common, and the Playdate pushes this to the next level. Being really careful with what is needed and making it worth going into the game has side effects that I’ll probably miss when going back to less performance-oriented development.

Thanks for reading and Fly Fast o7