Designing Whisker 2: From First Click to Final Level
Designing a game isn't just about individual mechanics. It's about crafting the entire experience from the moment someone clicks "Play" to when they finish the last level.
Designing a game isn't just about individual mechanics. It's about crafting the entire experience from the moment someone clicks "Play" to when they finish the last level.
I used to think programming was just about implementing designs. Then I learned that programming constraints actually make me a better designer.
I spent two weeks building a weather system for Whisker 2. It was going to make the game feel alive and dynamic. Then I realized it was making the game worse, not better.
One of the mechanics I was most excited about in Whisker 2 completely confused players during playtesting. Here's what I learned about the difference between what designers think and what players actually experience.
After making several games, I started noticing patterns in what made games feel satisfying to play versus games that felt frustrating or boring.
The Bakery level is the singular level I have probably spent the most amount of time on.
Today, I fixed one of the bugs that had been plaguing my development ever since I switched the character sprite in my game.
One of the biggest problems that came-up in my journey to draw my own characters was drawing the side profile.
For Whisker 2, I decided to make the bold design to make my own assets for the first time since creating the start screen for Murder Mystery.
When I started making my sequel to Whisker, my biggest upgrade was adding in more unique levels.
One of my biggest problems after I added in a lot of new features expanding the core gameplay of Whisker 2 was the player character becoming unable to finish orders.
After the COSMOS, one of the biggest things I wanted to work on for Whisker 2 was improving the UI.