Minigames, Activity, Time, and When to Put Ideas Away

A few weeks ago we had our systems done and our levels mapped. But, there was still time between setting up rooms and earning money, making the game feel slow and the wait a nuisance.  Our counter this idea was bringing back the old idea we had of minigames. Originally meant to stay in the entry room, where you can earn funds for the stations or decorate your room, I had made up a few that only seemed to have evolved and changed as time goes on. I had two types of minigames in mind, quick reaction games that took five to ten seconds, and ones that had you changing the station much like a new side objective would. Each faction had three or so minigames thought of, that stuck to their theme or rooms.  Passed to systems designers, art, sound, and programmers to see if it was possible, we were soon ready to start our first minigame, the bar. I paper prototyped it, we had sounds ready, references were sent to the artist for the bar,  and I put down how the game should function. Inching closer to implementing this new and exciting minigame was put to a screeching halt when we came to realize a problem.

Why do we need minigames in the first place? 

Well, there's a gap between money and building rooms. But, is minigames the right solution, or is fixing the systems better? One could call adding minigames to hide the solution, is like painting a tank of molasses brown and saying we fixed it. 

So comes the hard, but also a fairly easy solution to this. Minigames were scrapped and kept inside our archives until we fix the systems.  And, our systems designer has been working hard on that end, bracing us for what we might scrap in the process. Not that we'll say goodbye to most of the features, or that we will, but we have a goal in mind for the feel of the game, and we are doing what we can t ensure that feel is consistent with our ideas... as well as fun. Matter of Great Import, might be a bit different when the next build comes, but the feel of it will still be there, and we hope for your feedback more than ever too as we construct a new system to reduce that time and offer quicker gameplay.

-CJA