Organic vs Planned Development - What I learned from Making this game

My original for concept for Space Drift wasn’t anywhere near what the finished project became. Each early iteration was a way for me to prototype gameplay mechanics, then these prototypes were used as a foundation to build the rest of the game.

I’m not sure if this is bad way to build a game, I liked how I was able to playtest gameplay mechanics rapidly. As a beginner game developer I feel like this is especially useful as you need to learn what the tools you are using can do.

As an example, I used a physics engine that wasn’t standard to framework I was using. Initially I only did this so I could rotate a physics body, but after playing around with it’s capabilities I realized using it to bounce the player around and give enemies fluid movement would make the game a lot more fun. I really felt like it took my game to the “next level”, and it wouldn’t have been added had I not deviated from the original plan and throw it in.

This is what I liked about developing the game “organically”.

BUT

It’s a time consuming process. Writing code is just easier if you know what you’re building beforehand, with a total perspective of the project you’ll know what abstract concepts can be extracted into methods/classes and how they should work together.

Constant refactoring is a MUST if you’re going to make a game this way. This is where I feel I really failed in Space Drift. I cringe just thinking about the boiler plate code needed to make a new enemy, and the level generation mechanics might as well be magic for all I remember about how they work.

A big reason I released Space Drift when I did is because I didn’t want to deal with the code anymore and wanted a clean slate to work with again. If I’m trying to make good games (and I am) bad code shouldn’t play a major role in the decision to release a game.

Refactoring takes time, time is precious. It sucks to spend three hours refactoring a game when you want to add new features, but based on my experience on this game I think it’s absolutely necessary. And it becomes all the more necessary when approaching game development organically.   

FINAL THOUGHTS

This could all be because I’m still learning the game dev ropes. Maybe experienced developers can see a game through the multiple lens of the different tools they’ve worked with and are able to spin up prototypes with their imaginations.

I'd love to hear how other developers feel about this concept of “Planned vs Organic” and how they approach it :)