u/Big-Hold-7871

Two months ago I released the demo for my game Paradox Patrol. I had worked on the game for about half a year and created everything except the model assets from scratch. The game started it's life as an entry into a month long game jam. To my surprise, the game won the jam and it gave me a boost of confidence that maybe the concept for the game was worth fleshing out and turning into a full game. The theme of the jam was Evolution, so I came up with the idea of creating a gameplay system that merges two different genres.

Two of my favorite games are Metroid Dread (a 2.5D Metroid) and Returnal (a 3rd person shooter) and so I developed a gameplay system where the camera always stays fixed to the character like a 2.5D sidescroller, but allows you to move around and shoot in 3D space like a 3rd person shooter. Something I eventually ended up calling an Omni-shooter.

So I created an hour long demo with fully fleshed out mechanics and two major boss fights, posted some videos about it on my youtube channel and released it onto Steam...

At the time of writing this, the demo has one single review. For the few people that have played it, they really struggled grasping the controls because they are different than most games. That and the majority of people could not figure out how to progress through a certain part of the level, even though there are bright pink glowing flowers acting as a waypoints of where to go.

There have been a couple people who have posted let's plays of it onto youtube, but they all get stuck at that point in the level and give up; never getting to experience the best parts of the demo which are the two bosses 😞 I think why this happens is that people aren't used to playing a game that looks like a side-scroller but gives full 3D movement. So they aren't accustomed to thinking things like "Oh, maybe I should move towards the camera to explore."

I believe in the indie dev spirit of risk taking and not being afraid to try something different. But what I think my game proves is that there IS such a thing as being too different. I spent months essentially re-inventing the wheel to create a new gameplay genre, but it alienated players because it wasn't what they were used to playing control-wise. I'm still very proud of the game and I still love the concept and story. But I think if I want players to actually enjoy it, I'll need to toss out my Omni-Shooter system and turn it into a regular old 3rd Person Shooter.

It sucks because I truly enjoy playing the game with the Omni-Shooter controls. Once you get a hang of the controls, there really isn't any other gaming experience like it. But it's too big of an ask of players to take the time to learn how to play it. Especially in a gaming space where things move at a break neck pace and hundreds of indie games are released every day. People would much rather play something that they're comfortable with.

So I share with you my story and say all of this not to dissuade developers from trying to come up with something original or different. But just be cognizant that the more "unique" or complicated your mechanics are, the more barriers you make the player have to clear to be able to enjoy it. Put up one too many barriers and they'll just simply walk away.

The silver lining is that there wasn't anyone who disliked the actual game. They really enjoyed the sci-fi setting, characters and over-all concept. They just couldn't enjoy it because of the controls. So although it pains me to hit reset and throw away months worth of work. I think that's what I'll ultimately have to do.