Poetry Slammers V2 -- The Game finds its Voice

Continuing the patch note review for my upcoming game release of Poetry Slammers!

Three days after the first prototype, I was ready with more changes to share! Below are the patch notes for Version 2 (and Version 2.5). 

~~

Update notes V.002

• Character voices have been added! 
• Hear your Slammers speak.
• Updated "choose your Slammer" screen. Be sure to hit that "Mic check!" button to hear the voice that goes along with your selected skin.
• Reset button
• On the bottom left of the start screen you'll find a button to reset your play data to start a fresh new game. (will be removed for the full version of the game)
• Updated header. 
• Two new icons were added so that you can view your favorited poem and return to the identity screen.  
• There's also a running total of your stars you've earned and can now spend.
• When you first unlock a new coffee shop in the campaign map, a "now open" UI floats above it.
  New "Hint" button added to word creation screen. If you have stars to spend, you can trade a star for a hint to a word you may have missed.
• More free word tiles and punctuation tiles have been added. The intent is to give you more standard words to help flesh out your creations.
• New "Buy a 10-cent word" button. If you have stars to spend, you can trade a star for a special flowery word to really sell your poem. 
• These new words have a flashy label and appear in the new top magnet tray above the magnet board.
• Improved Poem performance!  
• After pressing the perform button, you'll find yourself on a stage, the lights dim, and a spotlight softly covers you in light. 
• You'll hear and see your slammer deliver their poem. 
• The lights come back on, and your judge gives their reaction, and you are awarded with stars for your performance.
• New interiors have been added to match the campaign you're currently in.
• New Library circuit
• 15 more puzzles to solve has been added
• Meet Styx, the wise judge of the library.
• Wall of Fame
• The Wall of Fame showing your favorite poem has a new look for your favorited poems.
• The shop your poem is displayed at, along with your poem and its star rating sit upon a label. 
• Scroll through your favorites here!

Update notes v.0025

• Android Build now available -- some minor graphic glitches but should work!

~~

I was so happy with the feedback from the first prototype that I was on fire and worked pretty hard to get a second version of the game out there to my friends and family ASAP. The base version of the game was working, but it was important to make this feel better in places where it came up short in the prototype. 

After playing the first prototype, it was pretty obvious that it was a MORAL IMPERATIVE that I add character voices and really improve the whole poetry performance phase. To those ends I started looking around at what was available in the Unity store and found a really good deal on an Animal Crossing-esque voice module and integrated it into the game. Adding a voice to the characters alone made them feel much more charming.

With that, it also became apparent that I couldn't just show the character reading the poem while the score was already showing. The performance phase needed some timing and pacing to make it feel fun. There needed to be the whole feeling of lights dimming, a spotlight shines on the character, they deliver the poem, the judge reacts, etc.

100 percent more presentation

Also, from the time I first thought of this idea, I knew I wanted to incorporate the ability to buy really fancy words. I remember being in poetry class back in college in the 90's and my professor introduced me to the term "10 cent words." As it was explained to me, poets that tried to get their poems published in newspapers and magazines used to look for the flowery words that publishers drooled over. In essence, poems that had "10 cent words" would make the publication sell better. So I added a special sticker for words that you could buy with stars and added a few dozen over-the-top words.

Buy ALL the 10 cent words!

At the time "stars" earn from making poems was the only available currency and actually worked pretty nicely here. After performing a couple poems, you had enough stars to start asking for hints when you were stuck making anagrams on the Magnet Maker and using stars to buy those fancy words for your fridge magnet poetry. This also gave extra motivation to try to earn more stars on your poems. (At the time, stars were only based on the number of words you used. In current builds, scoring has more logic to it.)

I also needed a place to keep and store your favorite poems, so the concept of the "Wall of Fame" emerged. Now you could play through five levels of a venue and end up choosing your favorite poem to "live" on the wall of that venue.

Finally, the idea of a campaign circuit and needing levels to play started to take shape. You start your adventures in the Coffee Shop circuit where you play through three coffee shop venues with five levels each.  After the coffee shop circuit came the Record Shop circuit. With the second build of the game I added the Library circuit. 

I'll just be reading poetry to Styx over here in the library

All of these circuits also have a poetry judge that represents them. In the Coffee Shop venues, you'll be judged by Feelixs the Beatnik Cat. In the Record Shop, you'll be judged by Claups, the soulful, one-eyed alien. With the library also came Styx, a crazy pink bird that also plays the drums besides chilling in the library.

Behind the scenes I also had AI helping me create a tool to make and import puzzle data. If it sounds like a lot of work for three days, it was, but like I said, I was on fire. Three days after that, version 3 was ready to rock . . . more on that tomorrow.

Happy dueling!

Introducing Poetry Slammers!

I posted back in June that I was solo dev'ing a hyper-casual mobile game that I had originally pitched to WIMO. I thought I'd take this opportunity to showcase my idea that became POETRY SLAMMERS!

Shenanigans I say!

Poetry slammers is a word game where you build words using a "magnet maker" and then use those magnets to create shareable magnet poetry. In essence, Wordscapes meets fridge-magnet poetry.

Classify the folio nostalgia accordingly, boo.

My Poetry Slammers concept was never made into a full-fledged pitch deck. I had a page of ideas that detailed things like Genre, Hook, Gameplay, Competitors, etc, but I never conducted a deep dive audience analysis, developed a taste map, detailed a tutorial, or any of the things that we normally would do to help flesh out an idea. This idea was just one of ten other ideas to see which one bubbled to the top for our execs. That said, I always thought this had potential even if it wasn't a hugely profitable idea that our company was willing to invest in.

Create at least five words and then start making poetry!

I've been uploading builds of the game to a password protected site and sending out links to a few friends and family to try out as I made playable builds of the game on Windows and Android. I'm currently on my 7th build of the game, and I think maybe I have only one or two iterations before I'm ready to share this publicly on an app store.

While creating this game, I've kept a pretty good log of my internal patch notes. Back on June 6th, I released my first build for friends and family:

Prototype Launch notes V.01

Poetry Slammers has reached its first playable prototype milestone.  This early version establishes the basic game loop: solve word puzzles, collect word magnets, build a poem, perform it, and receive a star rating from a judge.

• Core Features
• Word Wheel Puzzle
• Players can solve a word wheel puzzle by dragging through letters to form valid words.
• Completed words are tracked, and the puzzle can be finished once enough required words are found.
• Word Magnet Poetry Board
• After solving the word puzzle, players move into the poem-building phase.
• Words earned from the puzzle become draggable magnets that can be placed onto the poem board to create a custom poem.
• Perform Poem
• Players can perform their completed poem and move to a performance results screen.
• The game reads the poem from the placed magnets and formats it into a final poem text.
• Basic Star Rating
• Poems receive a simple star rating based on current scoring rules.
• This gives the prototype an early sense of completion and reward.
• Judge Reaction
• A judge provides a reaction after the poem is performed.
• Campaign Map 
• The first version includes the foundation for a campaign-style progression map, with nodes representing poetry locations.
• This establishes the structure for future circuits, unlocks, and themed content.
• Early Save/Progress Support
• Basic progress tracking is included so the game can remember completed content and earned stars.
• Prototype Goals
• Version 0.001 is focused on proving the core idea:
• Can a word puzzle feed into a poem-making board?
• Can players create something funny, strange, or charming with random magnets?
• Does performing the poem feel like a satisfying finish?
• Does the game loop feel worth expanding?

Over the next few days, I'd like to continue sharing the prototype patch notes and discuss how things have progressed since the first build. As noted in the post back in June, this is a game I'm using AI to help create: 

. . . and so, no one in the world would make this game but me ... so I might as well do it while recovering from Chemo. I threw on a blanket, sat in my computer chair, and shared my game idea with ChatGPT and I started chatting with AI about how to make this prototype, my overall vision for the game, and how it could help . . . 

I'm pretty excited to get this out there for those who love playing hyper-casual games like this. If making and sharing magnet poetry sounds fun to you, I hope you'll make room on your phone to give it a download and share a poem or two with your friends! 

A Death Howler back in Najena

There's something very addictive about fast leveling in Everquest Legends. I thought it was going fast the first time around, but the second time around goes EVEN FASTER! It makes sense that it would, especially when you're doing it like I am by maintaining your original class as your primary. I have a ton of gear backing me up this time . . . basically twinking myself. 

I didn't even play for that long today and I ended up earning 8 levels and logging off after dinging 20. The levels are coming so fast, that I can't really get a feel for my new set up that I'm trying. I'm not complaining, mind you, but I do have 20 AAs just sitting in the bank and only stopped leveling to equip new pets and pet buffs.

Un-binding the Unbound Flame.

I'm still loading up enemies with Damage over Time spells, but I just filled my spell book with a ton of missing necromancer spells and bard songs that I have no idea what it's like to use . . . and maybe that's ok. The thing about a triple class system is that you'll be able to play it any number of ways and it'll still work. 

Yeah, just buy 'em and move on folks . . . maybe I'll learn how to use them someday.

Speaking of triple classes, I wonder if anyone is going to start coming up with sub-class names for triple combos, like . . . Beast / Bard / Necromancer = Death Howler or Beast / Shadowknight / Cleric = Soul Warden. I like Death Howler . . . I think I'll keep that. 

Anyway, I had some fun in Befallen yesterday, but today I took it back to Najena like I did for my original run to 20. The upstairs proved once again to be an exp filled romp as I bounced between three bosses and just bathed myself in exp.

The only problem here is that I totally didn't do my raiding today.

Happy Dueling!

Beastlord / Bard / Necromancer / Befallen?

So, today in EverQuest Legends I did my standard raid rotation. I hit Cazic Thule, Nagafen, Innoruuk, and Lady Vox . . . powered up a few gear items . . . got a new 10 slot bag to put into my bank inventory and earned a bunch of new AA points.

I am perfectly happy with my Beastlord / Shadow Knight / Cleric build.  I like the Shadow Knight weapons and gear, I love the cleric heals, and Beastlord is just all around great. 

A couple hours ago, I decided, hmmm, what if I just did something really weird but kept my Beastlord base, what would that even be like . . . and so I changed my loadout to Beastlord / Bard / Necromancer and hit the change loadout button.

I honestly didn't know what to expect, but the game threw all my equipped gear into a special inventory in game, killed off my warder, de-leveled me to 10, and stripped me down to my iksar skivvies. So the next thing was to go into the special inventory and start pulling gear back into my bags and equipping it if it could still be equipped. Most of it could, some of it couldn't. All the Shadow Knight weapons and gear I mentioned liking went back into storage. All the fun AA's I purchased that weren't standard AAs became useless (no more unholy steed, no more pet hobble, no more turn undead, etc.)

Then I took a look at all my available spells and started a couple new spell sets: one for buffing and one for attacking. AND THEN, I ran to Befallen and zoned in. AND THEN, Tipa told her hubby to make fun of me being level 50 and just going to Befallen (because when you enter a new zone you've never been in before, it announces it in Guild chat.) AND THEN, I said, "nuh uh! I'm level 10!"

Tipa loves this little hole in the wall.

So, it took me a while to even figure out how to play this new combination. I never played a bard in EverQuest before, but I remember "twisting" was always a thing my bard buddies told me about. That was when you start a song, end the song, start a new song, end that song, start another song, end that song, etc. etc. Basically, once you start a song, it's turned on unless you turn it off, and you can't really do anything else. Your spell bar blanks out, but when you turn off a song, it sticks around for about 20 seconds. So you can play a number of songs over and over to keep buffs going. In addition, you can play those songs while moving unlike other spell casters where you have to be stationary. 

As for the Necromancer part of me, well, you get access to a lot of Damage over time spells and some life leech. At least that's what I could gather in the past hour or so. I'm not going to drop my beastlord pet for the necromancer pet, so that doesn't matter to me.

Anyway, I earned a couple levels and called it a night so I could get this blog post out and posted. Seems like this build would be all about the Damage over Time spells to be honest. It might be kind of fun to just load up as many dots as I can and see how it fares.

Six DoTs! I CAN DO BETTER!

Happy Dueling!   

Plane of Sky and the Pegasi!

Pretty happy with myself tonight as I was able to get my first piece of quested Plane of Sky gear!  (Also, going back to my post yesterday, I was able to write the first draft of my talk and prep for my Wednesday show-n-tell at the Cancer Institute. Maybe things ain't all bad!)

Griffon Hide Armbands!

This piece of gear isn't necessarily super impressive, but what I really like on it is that you can buff that up to 10th level and suddenly you've got an excellent piece of resist gear that's adding a lot of endurance to your pool. That's pretty great!

So, in case you don't understand how quested gear works in Plane of Sky, when you take down the big bosses on each island, they have a chance to drop you a little extra trinket for making special gear through a room full of efreeties. I can't say I understand why they're all standing there in a square like freaks, but I think it's because they're good buddies and also need to give you quests for your class specific gear. 

do I have to jump through all these hoops? Just cough up the gear mmkay?

To make the above piece of gear I needed two items. First was a little wind rune drop known as a Rune of Kala. Next was a leather cord from Gorgalosk. GORGALOSK?! THE SAME GORGALOSK THAT KICKED YOUR BUTT LIKE A WEEK AGO? Yup. I told you, leveling that heal made all the difference! 

A face not even a mother could love

In fact tonight I went all the way up to the Spiroc island after downing several griffons and pegasus on Island 4. It actually made me really sleepy. Once you'd down one pegasus, a second harder pegasus would spawn, which made battles incredibly lengthy. 

WHY WON'T YOU JUST DIE!

I'm too tired for this tonight! I'm going to bed.

Happy Dueling!

Me When I Do Something about Doing Something . . .

I woke up this morning with a genuine fear response that I can't really explain. It lingered here with me for about two or three minutes out of nowhere. It was a pretty odd feeling.

As I sat there gripped with fear for no reason, I had a lot of thoughts run through my head and one of them was about how much I hate EverQuest for sucking away so much of my time, but I think that was mostly just a reflection of how two or three things (outside of my new, reborn EverQuest Addiction) are stressing me out. Not EverQuest itself.

Yeah, it probably wasn't fear. I'm going to say it was probably stress that just finally manifested at the weirdest moment about 30 minutes before I was supposed to actually wake up . . . and THAT has been bothering me all day.

1. Blaugust stresses me out. I put everything on hold for it, and I don't know why I care so much about posting every day. I shouldn't! Literally people sign up and never post anything. Why should I care? I shouldn't!
2. I've been asked to give a ten-minute talk in church on Sunday. I haven't even started writing it, and that's stressing me out. I really need to just unplug and focus to get this done. I used to be in Toastmasters, so public speaking matters to me. I'm typically not one of those that just gets up and reads off a paper.
3. I signed up to showcase and talk about one of my songs and my album I've been working on called Cosmic Radiation and Bad Luck. This is for a group art night at the cancer institute this coming Wednesday. I shouldn't stress about this, but it's stressing me out. I've listened to the song 20 times, made a handout for it, thought about it waaaaaaay too much for a little art gathering of cancer patients.
4. I had to shift my whole infusion schedule around because I had COVID, so that's been delayed a week . . . and that's stressing me out. My brain latched on to that delaying treatment for a week and started going crazy. STOP BRAIN, STOPPP!
5. I came back to work yesterday with a mask on (out of an abundance of caution) and people were stressing out seeing me wear a mask . . . which stressed me out enough that I asked the big boss if I could just go work from home for the day, which I did.
6. Work in general is stressing me for some reason. Missing a couple days, fear of failing, an encroaching deadline . . . you know how it is, but I'm going to be fine . . . it's just all in my head.
7. I missed D&D because of the COVID. It's a stress reliever for me. (Much like video games are a stress reliever for me.)
8. I have a video game project I've been solo dev'ing. I've paused working on it now for about three weeks, and that's stressing me out . . . but it is what it is. I'm so close to getting this out the door and into people's hands for real on the app store. There's no deadline from anyone, but it's there hanging out in the back of my mind.

SO . . . I know I have a legitimate stress problem, and I think I inherited a lot of it from my mom. She was a Type A personality that oozed stress. I mean, look at me. I can't just play a game and enjoy it; I have to write about it. I can't just play a game of D&D with a local nerd group; I have to make a whole comic book. I can't just have cancer; I have to make an album of music about it. 

STOP! Why am I like this?

Honestly, I just need to put on some soothing music, light a couple candles, and chill tonight. I think I'll feel a whole lot better. I don't need to log on to EverQuest. I don't need to write a talk. I don't need to do anything . . . although technically I guess I did just write a blog post about not turning everything into a project.

I did it again, didn't I? GOSHDANGIT!!

Happy Dueling

Need Moar power? Level ALL THE THINGS in Everquest Legends!

Before I mentioned how I was running into a wall with soloing above the Tier 2 Nagafen solo raid boss with my current Beastlord / Cleric / Shadow Knight build, but NO MORE! Behold the delicious loot and corpse shot below from the Tier 4 Lord Nagafen.

What in the gold-plated koshigatana is going on here?

In EverQuest Legends you can not only level your loot, but you can level your spells as well, so today I took my Sacred Echo healing spell and amped it up to its fifth or sixth tier, which lowered its cost, lowered its casting time, and extended the duration of the heal over time. That was all I needed in my battles of attrition with the big bosses. Easy.

That wasn't the first spell I leveled though. That honor went to my Summon Warder spell, which I took all the way up to Tier 10, raising my summoned warder's level to 49, just one level below mine. That helps everything the warder does, from debuffing to tanking to dps'ing. Good ol' Stingite's Warder is my most valuable buddy! Just look at us posing together in the Plane of Fear.

Cazic scared the skin off my bones!

I didn't enjoy my time in the Plane of Fear proper. The adds are just as insane as I remembered them to be back in old school EQ, but the solo Raid version of the Plane of Fear is fantastic!  You kill four mini-bosses and their adds to spawn Cazic-Thule, and then you get to play Loot Pinata with Cazic! One thing I have to warn you about this, tank him so that if he sends you flying backwards, you end up inside the building, not over to one of the sides -- I did that and although it didn't cause me to lose the fight, ended up delaying the inevitable as I was swimming, floating, rooted, in a wall of fire, and about 100 feet off the ground.

This screenshot brought to you by the number 18.

Cazic Thule wasn't my only solo raid effort. I also ventured over to battle Master Yael, the angry elemental found at the bottom of The Hole. Yael is another one of those mobs that likes to send you flying backwards, which has the potential of sending you into a pair of adds. 

He's a pretty angry, animated dirt pile.

And finally, Innoruuk, the Prince of Hate, fell as well, and with that, I have now completed all the currently available solo raids in the game.  Planes Explorer Achievement complete!

Don't you hate when you're dead?

All that's left would be to see how far I can get in the Plane of Sky, which doesn't really have a solo "raid" like the other bosses. You can make a solo instance of the Plane of Sky, but there isn't really a 20 hour lock out and a voidling to get things started. There are keys for island hopping, but no voidling.

Anyway, the real breakthrough for me today was just seeing exactly how powerful raising all my spells in level can be. I've also managed to get a lot of Best in Slot (BiS) gear for both the Shadow Knight and Beastlord, so I'm feeling pretty good. Just need to keep hitting these raids OVER AND OVER AND OVER and I'll be all geared up with leveled spells just in time for them to drop Kunark on us and make all the work meaningless. ;)

Maybe by that time I'll have even overcome my barriers in the Plane of Sky . . . and THAT's going to be the end game grind, unless I want to just goof off like I did last night in the new, redone Castle Mistmoore zone. I made a respawning dungeon and cleared it all a few times, which had the side result of raising my faction with the king of the elves. Hmmm, to kill elves or embrace them . . . I'm not sure what to do.

Happy Dueling!