I changed my mind

Sometimes I forget that I’m a gamer. The kind of gamer who sees games as a challenge to overcome, who finds completing games rewarding in and of itself. If a game is too hard, well that just means I’ve got more practice to do, and it’ll be that much more rewarding when I beat it. But it’s a double-edged sword; if a game is too easy, it’s not fun for me.

As a game developer, I try my best to make games for all kinds of gamers, but I also try to make the kinds of games I’d want to play myself. I know my games aren’t for everyone, and I don’t try to make games everyone will like. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try to make my games as fun as I can for as many people as I can.

I read a post the other day that got me thinking about Qubit again. I put a lot of time and thought into balancing its difficulty, and I ended up with something I actually really enjoy playing, more than several of my other games. I fully intended it to be as hard as it is because that’s the kind of game it ended up being, and I was happy with it being a niche game that few people might like, but people like me would really enjoy. I hope you guys know I wasn’t trying to be mean or rude when I said to just keep trying. I try to give helpful tips and hints, but I was hesitant to change the difficulty of a game, especially if it’s more fun for me the way it is.

But after thinking about it more, my viewpoint has changed, and I thought of a way for everyone to have their cake and eat it, too. It’s actually the same thing I added to Darkhouse way back when; difficulty modes. I think a game with an optional hard mode is better than a game that’s just hard. So go give easy mode a try and see if it’s more fun for you.

Darkhouse is the only other game I’ve made so far with difficulty modes, and the only thing it changes is what checkpoints are active. The original version didn’t save any checkpoints after a game over, and the game takes about an hour to beat in one run. It just wasn’t really fair, so I added modes that made checkpoints permanent so players can keep their hard-earned progress.

I didn’t think to add difficulty modes to an endless game that only lasts a few seconds or minutes. Especially for small games like Qubit, I just try to make them for the kind of person I think would like them, and I don’t really update games much after their release (I also had this weird belief that I couldn’t update a jam game with more than bug fixes after the deadline).

So I might be pretty late with this update. I’m sorry it didn’t happen sooner, but at least it’s more accessible to future players.

Easy mode changes a lot, including the player’s physics that a lot of people suggested I change; now the player switches direction faster but has a maximum speed to stop further acceleration, so it feels lighter. It’s still not an easy game, but it’s a lot better than the original difficulty. I know the mechanics can be confusing but I swear they’re not that complicated; I am not smart enough to fully understand quantum physics, I just think it’s cool.

For me, easy mode isn’t hard enough. When I changed just the player physics and nothing else, I already managed to get past 2 minutes after a couple tries. After making all the other changes, I was able to surpass 5 minutes, which is longer than the game’s song. At one point I tunneled so many times I nearly reached the right edge of the screen, partly just due to chance, but I couldn’t have done it without all the health I’d accumulated. As interesting as that was, for me it’s just not as fun as normal mode, but my hope is that more people will have more fun with it than I do.

Thanks for getting me to think about this more, and don’t ever let me forget it. Oh, and I also added an even harder mode just in case even normal mode is too easy for you.

And for the record, I’m still going to make the full version of Darkhouse an absolute nightmare.