"Glitch Hunter" screenshots and analysis

The concept of "Glitch Hunter" sprung from a desire to apply tangible gameplay to the various unrelated levels I had been working on, sticking the player in a self-referential, purposefully unfinished product. After unplugging from a long gaming session, the player surrogate finds that ten years have passed, leaving them stranded in a bizarre future, occasionally experiencing hallucinations that they are still in a game. Ideally, the sense of fourth wall demolition would explain differences in lighting and mood, as well as any rough patches in the layout or gameplay.

True to form, I ended up becoming quite attached to the premise, thanks in no small part to my rapidly evolving (and admittedly intoxicating) coding skills. I think that codephobia is the number one thing which holds back budding designers, just as the limitless sense of "I can do anything now!" is in fact a massive stumbling block for those who have freshly conquered such fear. This iteration of "Glitch Hunter" may have buckled under the weight of such liberation, but it's not dead by any means - just sleeping an a cocoon state, metamorphosing into something stronger.

Naturally, a number of creatures have been auditioned in this setting (including sentient kombucha bottles and swarms of luminescent insects), but the most interesting story-wise are the remote drones. Produced by a range of fictional corporations and piloted by housebound consumers, they were designed to eventually fill any number of roles - merchants, civilians, street gangs, protestors, cannon fodder under the control of experienced hackers, you name it. The lack of a working text/dialogue system is one of the really glaring omissions in this attempt, as it means a lot of missed potential for in-game microfiction.

 The more brightly colored and visually confusing screenshots are from inside of Glitches, wandering holes in reality which can either help or hinder the player. I acknowledge that they look pretty ugly in this iteration, and plan to constrain them to a fixed palate rather than the "random color" approach which seemed so novel at the time. Naturally, the gameplay specifics of glitches is bound to evolve as different types of levels are played with, and at this point they don't do much aside from allowing the player to bypass the edges of the map.

 The square, tablet-like device at the bottom of each shot is, fittingly, named the H.U.D., or homeowner's utility device - serving as both the player's visual interface and defense method, it's meant to feel a little out-of-date with the rest of the world's technology. It fits as a sort of gauntlet in the right hand while the left controls the touchscreen, and has a wide range of practical/impractical attachments (flashlight, keychain, CD player). These are installed in pairs and controlled by left and right mouse clicks - which ideally will someday make for a wide range of customizable play styles.

 It's probably worth mentioning that a portion of these screenshots are from procedurally generated stages. Random worldbuilding is, in my view, a very interesting method of squeezing a lot of gameplay out of very few assets, and while I certainly didn't nail it here, I at least got a good sense of what not to do. Namely, these maps generate in real-time (a massive blunder, causing flash-freezes every few steps), and have all sorts of problems with altitude changes. Still, a noteworthy lesson, and big stepping stone towards subsequent improvements.

Design-wise, there are some outstanding visual blemishes, like the jarring color choices and inconsistent textures, as well as a general lack of direction in regards to gameplay. Certainly to be expected from a first prototype which did quite a bit of on-the-spot evolution, trying to accommodate a wide range of early programming experiments. While I label my early paper maps as "blueprints," this is really the first thing I've done which fits that word, and I can now recognize that a single hour with a shifting in-dev game like this is more beneficial than a thousand detailed design docs.