I’ve been working on my superhero rpg/puzzler Spandex Force: Superhero U for a while now, and many ideas have been implemented…and abandoned. For fun I thought I’d give an analysis of the various ideas I’ve had, that have been discarded.

Online multiplayer
This is a no-brainer really. Create your own superhero and battle others online. This would work great for a bigger production, but since I’m a small indie developer I can’t assume that there will always be dozens of players online at any time, ready to battle anyone who wishes to have a go. The idea is obvious and would be great for building a community, but it’s simply not feasible with my projected sales/plays.

But all is not lost: I have some fancy ideas for online multiplayer despite this. There will be lots of heroes created by everyone…but everyone’s not online at the same time. So what do I do? I’ll make an “offline” online mode, where you battle AI representations of players instead.

Superhero teams
Why just play one-against-one? Why not have superhero teams that battle against each other?

Well, the simple answer is: it doesn’t fit in well with the superhero school idea I went with. But this one is still on hold if I create another Spandex Force game.

Simultaneous play mode
I still have code to enable this mode in the game, but I’ll probably skip it – at least for the story mode. The idea is that instead of taking turns, you battle an opponent and you both make your moves simultaneously. This can be done on a common board, or on two separate boards.

It was a pretty neat idea, but in the end I decided to remove this. First of all, using a common board with simultaneous moves just becomes…chaotic. Things just happen with little strategy involved at all. If two separate boards are used, the strategy element is even farther removed and everything becomes a simple “who can make the fastest moves” competition. Also, it may sound like a stupid reason, but screen real estate is another problem. Two boards simple takes up a large amount of screen space, even if I make the opponent board smaller!

We’ll see if I revise this idea or not. For now, Spandex Force: Superhero U uses a common turn-based approach.

Sidekicks
A neat little idea where you can select a sidekick that will help you in various ways. Quite inspired by the companion in King’s Bounty: The Legend. This one is still on a “maybe” list. It’s a good idea, but the feature’s value might not be enough to warrant the development time.

…And lots of other things…

I’m certain that what IS left in the game will be plenty enough to make a thoroughly fleshed-out RPG/puzzler, though.