Comms Under Fire - Update 01

Source: Dev.to

This is a major update that I’ve done on my game.
From a shift in the overall purpose of the game, to the mechanics, down to how things look. Below I will go over everything that I’ve done and try to explain why I’ve done it.

Purpose

Originally I wanted to create a web demo of a game I’ve wanted to create for PC—a game where you’re in the driver’s seat of a propaganda machine, the middle man between soldiers on the ground and the powers that decide the fate of the nation. Oh, and this takes place during a war…

Once I created the demo I realised that the tools I had to create this proved to be more difficult, so I stripped back some functionalities. In doing so I realised I was working toward a different idea: a classic competitive typing game.

This will have leaderboards, with those who have the highest WPM sitting at the top, challenge modes where you can challenge other users to see who types the fastest, and a story mode for players who just want to improve in a relatively stress‑free environment while getting the gist of the story in this world.

Mechanics

The mechanics have not changed that much; the major change is that I am trying to remove any mouse input, making the main element of the game controlled solely by keyboard inputs.

Looks

Originally I had two monitors on screen: one displayed the text you needed to type, and the other displayed the text you were typing.

This approach brought a few issues. Firstly, people kept getting lost in the text because they had to move their eyes between two monitors. The fix was to show a cursor indicating where you were as you typed, but this made people focus only on one monitor, rendering the two‑monitor approach redundant.

Now I think I will still keep the two‑monitor approach for the main game I plan on creating, but for now a single monitor seems to do the job just fine.

Update 01

Here we are with the first update.

• A whole new game mode: from a story‑driven typing game to a ranked typing game.
• A whole new look: from a two‑monitor setup to a single‑monitor setup that can be controlled entirely with the keyboard.

For Update 01 I’ve only included the story mode, but rest assured I am working on many updates to add all the game modes mentioned, plus any new ones that come to mind.

Thank you for reading, and please check out the game here.