Screenshot Saturday - February 2nd, 2023

Since the last update I've made one major change to the goal of each level.

Collecting the most stars in the fastest time possible just didn't feel good to me. I didn't feel any reason to play a level and I didn't feel like there was a reason to go fast. I came to realize what was missing from the game after watching this great video titled Vampire Survivors Only Works Because We're Stupid by Adam Millard - The Architect of Games. I highly recommend this video. I'm not going to recap the video, but basically I realized a couple things:

1. That collecting 3/5 stars in 3 seconds was unsatisfying because these numbers just were not impressive to me. To be clear, that could be a really solid performance, but the literal number 3 is such a small number it just felt insignificant.
   1. Without an anchor these are meaningless
2. I didn't really feel like I was losing if I finished a level too slow or didn't collect all the stars in a level. There was no real consequence from what I could tell.
   1. Without context as to how other players perform, I just couldn't care less about replaying a level.

I decided to make a change. Rather than representing performance as a summary of what happened (e.g. You collected 4/5 stars in 13 seconds), I decided to introduce a scoring system. Each level begins with a base score, say 1,000 points. As soon as a level starts, your score will decrease over time. When you reach the end of a level (an active portal), your score is locked in. Collecting stars give you points to recoup what you've lost. The faster you finish a level and the more stars you collect the higher your score. 

I personally felt two positive changes:

1. It felt like there was more of a purpose to play the game.
2. I have more fun replaying levels.

I think this is for two reasons.

1. The decreasing score plays on the idea of loss aversion. We're wired to avoid losing resources.
   1. We especially don't like losing large quantities of resources.
2. The stars have more meaning to me now.
   1. As a player I value their importance and I want to figure out how to get all of them as fast as possible to maximize my score.

In a practical sense there are some actions I need to take now:

1. For each level I've made sure that the base score is a high number.
   1. In the very first level, it's1000. Each level will have a higher base score, increasing the stakes as the difficulty rises. Starting with 20,000 points is great, but only if you can keep it! 
2. Star placement needs to be balanced around the goal and should be a critical part of each puzzle.
   1. The stars still serve their original purpose of guiding the player through the level (to an extent) but now also serve as an important resource as they get your score back up.
   2. It shouldn't be easy to just fetch every single star.
   3. Funny enough, there's also an element of risk as some stars can be positioned in places that will take you longer to get effectively negating their value. I may play around this a bit more.
3. Some of the test levels were designed before I had this goal in mind, and I do notice that I find myself getting frustrated in certain levels where I'm just waiting for a ball to fall from the sky so I can use it to turn on a switch.
   1. I think this frustration stems from the fact that the level design is taking away my control of the outcome.

With this change I actually feel like the game is a lot more fun. I felt more intrinsic motivation to play the game. Now I have to get some play testers to see how they feel about each level.