‘Sunken Treasure’ Progress

Aug 7
2006

I’ve been working on Sunken Treasure, mostly on the art and sounds. I haven’t made a lot of progress because I can already tell that the game is fundamentally flawed. It’s cute, but it’s not fun to play. I believe the game needs an element of risk, so you can risk loss or damage to achieve a possible greater gain. This is the route I’m going to pursue:

Instead of just diving down to collect one piece of treasure at a time, the water will be much deeper with much more treasure down there. If you want to play conservatively, you can dive down to the first piece and bring it back up, like the game is now. However, if you want to earn more points, you can dive deeper and collect more treasure. The treasure that is deeper down will be worth more points, and you will get a bonus based on how many pieces you bring to the surface. The risk will be that the deeper you dive, the more fish you have to navigate around, and if you get hit by a fish you will drop all the treasure. So if you dive down and collect 5 pieces you won’t get any credit for them unless you can make it back to the surface without getting hit.

The problem with this is that I will need to implement a scrolling mechanism in the game, which will require a bit of work. Since I will be re-factoring a lot of the game I’m considering redoing the entire game using the new ActionScript 3. I think it will be better in the long run, but it will push the completion date of the game out a little further.

If you’re anxious for some sweet Sunken Treasure action, you can play the new prototype here.