When the idea for LEMNIS GATE came along, the team was developing its debut title, VROOM KABOOM. Crazy concepts like this don't come up that often, so we decided to build a prototype to validate the new game's core pillars. With the team still working on our first game, time was of the essence, so we used store assets to accelerate the process as much as possible. After just one month, we had a working prototype that became the starting point for what is now LEMNIS GATE!
In hindsight, having a playable prototype at such an early stage of development was incredibly useful to our production in many ways. For this dev blog, we wanted to share with you some of our key learnings and why we believe a playable prototype is such an essential first step towards building an awesome game.
• Concept Validation: The prototype's primary function was to validate our gameplay pillars and demonstrate that a turn-based shooter could actually work while being strategic and fun. We needed to know quickly if this concept was something worth pursuing before investing a lot of time and effort into its production.
• Test Lab: As well as validating the core pillars, our prototype was also a test tool for many gameplay features and level design layouts. With a new game structure like a turn-based FPS, it was essential to explore what kind of game modes, maps, weapons, and abilities we could bring from classic shooters.
• Communication: Prototyping also helped to communicate and pitch the project's vision internally to the team (and external parties too!). This way, everyone understood what we were working towards from the very beginning. We cannot stress the importance enough of having a coherent vision across your team, especially when creating something with unconventional ideas like LEMNIS GATE. On paper, a new game idea raises many question marks, and it opens the concept to a lot of personal interpretation. A playable prototype goes a long way towards answering a bunch of those questions and alleviating differing interpretations of core concepts.
• Finding the fun: The prototype, above all else, helped us explore the most critical factor of any video game, the fun. It's significantly more complex to make rapid iterations on a full-featured codebase than on a disposable one. Prototyping provides the freedom to make quick implementations and lets us explore wild ideas with ease. We also adopted a small philosophy to help keep us on track: if an idea doesn’t yield results quickly, it’s probably too complex, so move on and try something else! There’s always another cool idea around the corner!
Now you know more about our prototype! We can't wait to show how much the game evolved since then!
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