Sunday, August 30, 2026

Poetry Slammers v.65 -- More comics!

At this point in building Poetry Slammers, I started to get a little disappointed with the payoff from moving from one circuit to another. It felt a bit like "more of the same." To counteract that I made MORE COMICS! The comic system was working pretty great for tutorials, so I decided to apply this idea to when you finished a venue. Now when you completed a venue, the poetry judge quotes your winning poem and celebrates it being put on the wall of fame.

Gingrr loves your poem!

After finishing three venues, you complete a circuit. When you completed a circuit, I needed the character to wander off of the screen, transition to a new circuit, and then have your character wander back on to the screen.

The share button on the Wall of Fame was feeling a bit hidden as well, so I brought that forward on to the campaign map screen and made it so you knew exactly which venue you were in by glancing at the campaign circuit.

Now you see you've completed the first venue and can share your poem from right here!

As I started getting closer to bringing this to a live game environment, I knew I needed a premium gem currency so that I could sell something for real money, but I also wanted there to be a way to give this to the player as well. I decided to reward players for opening up the wall of fame. If they did, they'd find a gem attached to the venues they had completed.

With this build, unfortunately, I was once again extending the pipeline for creating new circuits, which I was trying to avoid, but I think the game needed just a little extra charm to sell it. Now when I create a new circuit I have to also build the following:

  • A campaign strip with three new venues
  • Separated building icons for each new venue
  • One themed exterior background
  • One themed interior background
  • 15 new puzzles (five for each venue)
  • A new judge character
  • A new speaking animation set for the judge
  • A new slammer variant skin of the judge
  • A new speaking, idle, and victory animation of this slammer variant
  • New Judge reactions for poems rated 0-5 stars, reactions for not meeting the judge's challenge, reactions for meeting the judge's challenge, reaction for going into happy tears overflow.
  • A new squishmello variant of the slammer
  • Sometimes a new music track for the circuit
  • A new 8-bit variant of the slammer
  • Three comic panels to match each venue in a circuit
Long story short, that's a lot I need to remember when building a new circuit!

Below are the patch notes:

~~

Poetry Slammers v0.65 -- Slamtown Celebrations

  • New Venue-Completion Stories
    • Completing a venue now unlocks a short comic featuring its resident Slammer.
      • These comics celebrate your progress, react to your winning poem, and give each stop in Slamtown a little more personality.
      • Winning poems now receive the celebration they deserve.
      • Words from the poems you created burst across the screen in a colorful fireworks display during the venue-completion story.
  • Gems
    • A new premium currency has arrived in Slamtown.
    • Completing a venue earns you one Gem, which can be claimed from that venue’s winning-poem card on the Wall of Fame.
    • Gem rewards are saved permanently and can only be claimed once per completed venue.
    • More uses for Gems will arrive in future updates.
  • Improved Campaign Map
    • Completed venues are now easier to recognize.
    • Created a COMPLETE banner
    • Added a dedicated Share button to the campaign map to give better access to the winning poem associated with that venue
  • New Circuit Transitions
    • Finishing the final venue in a circuit now triggers a special transition ceremony where your Slammer walks away from the completed neighborhood, the scene fades, and the character arrives in the next area of Slamtown.
  • Additional Improvements
    • Winning poems now save correctly before venue-completion stories begin.
    • Added additional Comic tutorials to explain the Wall of Fame. 
    • Various campaign-map, transition, save-data, and presentation fixes.
~~

Tomorrow will catch you up to my current build of the game and I'll be finishing off Blaugust as well! I hope you all have enjoyed reading about the process I've gone through in building Poetry Slammers.

Happy Dueling!

No comments: