Version 1 of "Let's Farm" is Released!

Before creating this game, we had to spend a lot of time discussing the features, mechanics, aesthetics, and dynamics in order to create the best game possible within the given time period. We certainly had to get a lot of coursework out of the way to spend a lot of time coding up this game and ensuring there are no bugs, but what we found most challenging was balancing this game. Most of  the balancing is done in terms of the mathematical implementation. Every fruit has to progressively be more expensive to unlock, but we had to ensure that the players would still have to put a reasonable amount of time into playing the game in order to make their work rewarding and engaging. Since the value of the Orange and Banana are higher than the Apple, we had to make it proportional to the upgrade value that is added to the fruit once it is unlocked. For example, we had to ensure that the upgrade would allow each fruit to proportionally output to a number that is a tiny bit higher than the initial one, which is a bit higher than twice as much. Basically, the overall hardest part of balancing the game was also in correlation to the time frame we would expect a player to finish it in. We had to play test to ensure that the game was matching up to our expectations in terms of the balance, and it was nice allowing our friends and family members to ensure that what we had was sufficient in terms of player experiences. Basically, we judged their efforts to see if  we needed to balance the game better or not. For example, thoughts would come into our head of whether they were trying less when they progressed more than halfway throughout the game or if they were still facing the same impatient feeling they had initially  before unlocking the fruits with higher value. It is in our interest to ensure that we use the notes we took of other games we played such as Cookie Clicker to ensure that our game was just as well balanced. Whether or not the player unlocked the upgrades or not, we had to ensure that our game had a linear "Wallet to Click Ratio" consistently throughout the progression of the game. We decided to set the maximum score to $50,000,000 in order to ensure that the game was able to be completed within half an hour considering the freedom we gave to players. In terms of upgrades, we decided to leave it to unlimited because that would provide more incentive for the cycle of earning cash, unlocking upgrades, and trying to earn cash faster in order to reach the max score possible. The importance of balance in game development is to ensure that the various features and aspects all serve an equal purpose just as well. We did not want to include anything that had the possibility of being deemed as “useless” and against the goal of the player experience.  In addition to this, we had to spend extra time refining the game along as we went. There were nights where we were up past midnight just to make sure that there were no bugs affecting the player experiences at all. Coming up with an original game that wasn’t thought of before was surely tough, but the development process brought out a meticulous side because of the passion we had for this game. We thought we were done with the first version put up on Itch.io, but we realize that we needed to add more character and provide more of a “Paradigm Shift” that would be thrown in so players wouldn’t be as bored. We also didn’t want the game to feel repetitive, so we wanted to throw in some extra unexpected mechanics as the game progresses overall such as "Combo Clicking Bonus Points". We can certainly conclude that this game development experience was a very fun and challenging experience . Through hard work and a lot of passion, we learned that we can execute our ideas to life as long as we put in the time needed.