With the February slouch closing in, your friendly neighborhood dev admits to putting in time working on balance issues, engine tweaks, and other not-as-fun-to-show things that are as inspiring as looking out your window in the dead of winter. That in mind, I do have a few items to talk about this week, and brought a few visual aids.

You'll likely remember this entry from a couple of months ago. Above is an updated version of Harmonic Odyssey's layout as it currently stands. In that previous article, we discussed how the layout of a game can be neatly packaged in these mapped formats to give a developer a clean look at pathways, milestones and goals in game design. We also touched on the idea that this overview lacks pacing and a broader look at the time a player will take to get it all accomplished. 

If you're into music, think of our first draft as the tablature of a song -- we're just hammering out notes and 'sketching' things as we work out how they're meant to feel. This newer model can therefore be likened to a more complete piece of sheet music, with considerations thrown in for timing, breaks, and the inevitable looping back around from a starting point.

In older entries within this development blog, I fell in love with the idea of allowing the player to pick and choose their level progression within Harmonic in any way they saw fit. As reality began to set in, and I realized the implications of that choice and just how much work that would require, I shelved it in favor of pursuing a more linear course. Naturally, in a game that claims to take inspiration from choose-your-own-adventure scenarios, this didn't mesh, either, so a compromise between the two was reached.

As you might be able to discern from the chart, overall progress through the game (that is, from start to finish) begins at the top, and moves downward. However, gameplay itself progresses left to right, and places of interest are marked by different symbols. This chart drills into the core of the game pretty hard, so I've omitted any labelling to keep from spoiling anyone, but red circles are bosses, squares (of any color) are areas, diamonds are key items/story points, and triangles are cutscenes. Maybe most important are the lines connecting everything -- solid black for obvious paths, dotted for hidden, blue paths directly and/or indirectly open access to other points in the game, and the green path converges through the bosses to give access to the final parts of the game.

In this way, the hope is that the game will benefit from a storyline that's as linear as the player wants to make it. Want to play through the storyline and just plain get to the end as soon as possible? That's fine! And if you're an explorer who likes to delve into lore and paths less taken, you too will be rewarded for the effort with cool power ups, extra areas to find, and a hidden boss fight or two. And let us not forget the multitude of endings that, as of this writing, will be available to both speedrunners and take-your-timers as well.

That's all for now, gang. I have a lot going on behind the scenes with music and significantly more interesting things that I'll be glad to cover for you in the weeks ahead. Until then, take care!