writing everything i've ever thought about fox flux and game design is rather intimidating, so i'm gonna try writing a few shorter things.
i like this one because it's such a basic and simple thing, but it feels like it encapsulates so much about what makes game design interesting.
so, fox flux was originally a jam game. in that game, there was one thing to get: hearts.
every level had 25 hearts. there was a counter in the top right of the screen showing how many you'd found.
also, the levels were relatively small. there was a little bit of sprawl, especially in the earlier ones, but there was a strong lean towards "small, skippable puzzle → cluster of 2 to 4 hearts". and that was the whole thing.
as the new shinier reimagining developed, i swiftly decided i needed a second Kind Of Thing. having just hearts made the levels slightly monotonous. there were never going to be any surprises; the next thing you see is going to be a heart. and i couldn't make the levels too big, or there would be either big empty areas with no hearts at all, or so many hearts that they felt cheap.
the classic platformer thing is to have a very common collectible, which then functions as something akin to currency. in mario/wario games, this is literally coins, and 100 become an extra life. in other games... i don't know? i mean, the coin is so iconic that i can't think of anything else. i'm just pretty sure that every platformer i've ever played has had a floating thing that goes in your wallet.
i didn't want to use money — that's a little too on the nose, and anyway it's very weird in-universe to just have a bunch of cash floating around. but i also didn't want it to be some bizarre thing like feathers or bananas or whatever, where you look at the game and squint and think "i don't know what these are here for or why i want them, but the game seems to want me to get them, so i guess i will".
and i suppose that's what drove the brainstorming here: what do i want to collect?
the answer is very simple: candy. i want candy. i want a lot of candy.
so the new game is full of candy. it is full of candy. i think one of the levels has more than 600 candy.
and it's just a great thing to have around. it lets me add breathing room between heavier puzzles by giving you little arcs of candy you can try to get in one jump, with zero penalty for failure. it gives me something to draw funny patterns with. it gives me an easy way to guide the player. it gives me something to fill space with, so the levels can be bigger. and best of all, it lets me make hearts feel more special — you now get them one at a time, usually after doing something a little more elaborate, instead of just bumbling into entire clusters of them. i even added a little jingle and full-screen "heart get!" thing.
and because "candy" is such a broad but also instantly recognizable category, i can inject variety by having a bunch of different kinds of candy, and even make them worth different amounts. the basic unit is a jelly bean, worth 1, which comes in eight different colors! but i also have several colors of swirl candy, chocolate coins (as a wink to wario land, and which i tend to put near arcade machines), and some others. bonus rooms, inspired by the bonus rooms from wario land 4, have a lemon drop worth 50 as a reward.
best of all, "candy" and "hearts" have an obvious overlap in the form of candy hearts — and so i added a candy heart, which automatically spawns over your head once you've collected 250 candy in a level.
like, wow. that worked out fantastically. it feels like i'm making a pun, except it's a real game mechanic. it even feels good to get, a little surprise heart that you didn't have to work too hard for, a breather in between trying to get some trickier ones.
ok so here is my moment of baby game dev insight.
i did later add a shop, but initially, i wasn't sure the candy would act as currency. (arguably it still doesn't, since the reason you can buy things with it is completely ridiculous.) and this posed something of a problem: if it has no gameplay benefit, will players even care about collecting it?
but i put it in anyway and gave it a shot.
and reader: yes. yes, i do care about collecting it. it doesn't matter if it does something, or if it counts towards 100%, or whatever.
because you see, i want to get candy. i just love candy. i bet almost everyone loves candy. even if it's a fake candy on a screen, i see it, i think "oh i want some candy", and i feel inclined to go get it. and now i can get a bunch of it in a row! and there's a little happy bloop every time i do! it is great. i don't even need to give a contrived reason for the protagonist to want the candy in-world, because guess what? she loves candy too!
i feel like that taught me something important about what games are for. i don't need everything to be a step towards some larger grander reward. it's just fun to grab a bunch of brightly-colored candy. it's fun to do. it feels great.
and that's been a broader goal: that it should always be fun to just run around in the world, even if you're not accomplishing anything.
i think my best candy innovation though is the candy corn.
one minor issue i ran into is that sometimes i find a spot in a level that you can get to, but only with some clever shenanigans that are well beyond what i want to require for the level. and i want to put something there as a little thumbs up. but i ended up with a whole system where 100%ing the level gives you a little gold trophy, and "100%" includes getting all the candy. so if i put candy somewhere, i am requiring that you get it if you want this little gold icon. and, knowing that, it seems mean-spirited to put just a few candies in a really finnicky place.
the solution is candy corn.
see, the various candies have different values, depending on how tasty lexy thinks they are. which is really how tasty i think they are. and candy corn, i assure you, tastes like absolutely nothing. i eat a candy corn and all i think is "oh i wish i had some actual candy". it's not bad; it's just nothing.
so i added a candy corn pickup, which is worth... 0 candy.
you can see it in the level. you might even feel compelled to try and get it. you know i put it there specifically because you can get it. you can touch it, and you can pick it up.
and it is worth: zero. it accomplishes nothing. there is no gameplay reason to do it.
but it's there, so maybe you will anyway.
because it's fun to get candy.
