Journal entry 1

While I'm not going to pretend that this project wasn't a highly compressed marathon of development due to time constraints, but the development still went through several stages. This journal entry will detail the design decisions I made while planning out the project.

The one-page design I received presented me with an interesting challenge. As a player, I prefer levels designed around either interesting and challenging level design or a hard-to-master movement mechanic. My design, however, targets a different kind of player. The kind I would call "the speedrunner". This is not to say that speedrunners prefer simplistic games, but that the main focus of a game for a speedrunner is optimizing a route in ever-decreasing competitive times.

 To satisfy these players, the game would have to:

• Have a way to measure time and save it
• Have multiple non-linear walkthroughs possible
• Get in and out quick - meaning it has to be short in order to encourage multiple playthroughs without making the player feel the simplistic jumping mechanics.
• Only limited (if any) randomization, to allow for planning of routes

The other issue is, however, that in a fairly short game, the optimal time route would get figured out fairly quickly, so the score should not consider time only, which forces us to consider other factors we have available:

• The greater the time, the lesser score gained from it
• Collectibles
• Monster kills
• Lives left

The ratio of contribution of the individual elements is yet undecided, but combining these variables with ambiguous and non-linear level design may result in a worthwhile speedrunning experience.