When we came to the decision to make Cally’s Caves 3, we knew that we would have to radically rethink many of the gameplay mechanics that were in Cally’s Caves 1 and 2.  One of the biggest benefits of creating a direct sequel is that it gives us an opportunity to do things differently.  We are proud of our first two games, but it’s always helpful to take a step back and try to evaluate what you’ve created from a different perspective.  Then, we can use our experience making the first two games to make Cally’s Caves 3 bigger, and much better.  This Dev Diary will outline many of the design decisions we made during the planning phase of Cally’s Caves 3 development.

Bigger, but not Always

Cally’s Caves 1 and 2 were made of art assets that were mostly 32×32 pixels.  We managed to get away with it by zooming in a little bit on the assets, so they appear larger on an iOS screen that 32×32 pixels.  While we are happy to keep going in that direction, we know that we want to have some enemies or bosses that are quite large on the screen.  This presents a unique challenge, as some of the boss sprites are so big, they won’t fit on the in-game screen.  To account for this (and maintain the large size), we decided to implement a better boss introduction mechanic.  When the player first sees a boss, the game camera focuses solely on the boss object, to highlight the size of the sprite, and make sure players get a good look at the boss before the fight kicks in.   Continue reading →