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!

Poetry Slammers v6 -- Time for Poetry Breaks

About the time version six came out, I started to feel like there needed to be at least one different way to construct poetry. The magnet maker game is super casual, and all it requires is the ability to build anagrams. Seeing as how the circuit associated with this update was all about Arcades, it felt natural to build an arcade type of poetry game to go with it. 

When I sat and thought about what game would work here, I could definitely visualize how a game of Breakout could work, and so that's what I did. (In fact, the bricks in Breakout already look a bit like Poetry Magnets.) This works exactly as you would expect, you slide your finger along a bar to move your paddle and bounce a ball back up at the bricks, which contain words.

Break the bricks, collect the powerups, don't miss the ball, and have fun!

You're scored in poetry breaks according to the number of power ups and power downs you collect. Since the power downs are riskier, they're worth more. in other words, if you collect a power down that makes the ball move twice as fast, it's worth more points than if you collect a power up that grows the size of your paddle. Ultimately, you're aiming to break all the blocks that contain specifically arcade-themed words in 30 seconds, but as a fail-safe, just in case you really aren't good at this side mode game, you can still make a poem out of words that are arcade themed.  

Your poem is saved along with your score!

Every time you beat a game of poetry breaks, you'll get a new currency called pixel coins. Because I now had pixel coins, I needed to build something you could BUY with pixel coins. To those ends, I built a new character skin you could buy that featured Feelixs, but in 8-bit form. That required building a whole suite of animations and everything for the new skin. I also made a new Arcade word buff so you could start each game with an arcade word right out of the gate.

Of course, I had to build a social sharing screen for Poetry Breaks as well

Because I was already building an Arcade word buff it made me realize that it just made sense to tie word groups together and make word banks for every existing circuit. Now when you were making poetry on the Coffee Shop levels, a third of your available words used to construct poetry would be coffee themed. Poems for venues now matched the venues pretty good!

As for the side mode and rearranging of the circuits, my thought here was that every three or four circuits, I would love to open up a new feature or a new way to play the game. Because of that, I reordered all of the circuits to accommodate that game design decision. 

~~

Poetry Slammers v0.6, Welcome to   Poetry Breaks!

• A new Arcade Circuit has been put into the game.
• Rearranged the campaigns so that the Arcade Circuit comes after the Library Circuit
• Current circuit order is as follows:
• Coffee Shops
• Record Shops
• Libraries
• Arcades
• Campgrounds
• Oddity Shops
• The Arcade Circuit features a standard 15-level campaign circuit, packed with arcade-themed words, neon vibes, and a new judge.
• Paku, the arcade judge, is all about action words. 
• Beat all 15-levels to earn his identity.
• New Side Mode: Poetry Breaks
• In the bottom left-hand corner of the campaign screen, you'll now find an arcade cabinet button. 
• The arcade cabinet is locked until you reach the Arcade circuit (note for beta testers, you can click the debug button to advance quickly to try it out)
• Poetry Breaks is a playable retro brick-breaking side mode where you play a "breakout" type of game to collect word magnets.
• Move your finger along the finger slider to move your paddle.
• Smash bricks and collect word magnets
• Chase five special Arcade target words
• Grab helpful pickups and risky power-downs
• Turn your collected words into a custom poem 
• Save your best runs to the Poetry Breaks High Score board
• Share your poems from the high score board with a special 8-bit look on your share card.
• Earn Pixel Coins based on the Arcade target words you collect.
• Spend Pixel Coins in the Slamtown Shop on new arcade-themed rewards.
• New Shop Items
• Arcade Word Cache
• Purchase this timed buff to start normal poems with a free Arcade-themed bonus word.
• Arcade Cache words have their own special pixel magnet style, so they stand out from regular Star Words.
• Pixel Feelixs
• Pixel Feelix is now available as a permanent Pixel Coin unlock.
• Play as your favorite sassy poet in pixel form!
• Magnet Styles and Poetry Board improvements
• Star Words and Arcade Cache words have an improved special presentation on the poetry board
• Now you have access to more standard articles and prepositions along the bottom row of the word tray.
• Your third row of magnets in the word tray will now always feature themed words that correspond to the circuit you're playing in.
• Added new words for all the circuits to give your poems even more themed flavor.
• Other Improvements
• Added Arcade-specific campaign music support.
• Improved shop support for Stars, Happy Tears, and Pixel Coins.
• There's a new count of your currencies at the bottom of the shop.
• Added better handling for purchases made during an active poem
• When room is available, newly purchased Star Word and Arcade Cache buffs can add their bonus word when you return from the shop.
• Continued tweaking the Expand and Collapse button during the poetry phase.

~~

I got a bit frustrated with the game and so I wedged in a sub build . . . version 6.5.  More on that tomorrow!

Happy Dueling!

Poetry Slammers V5 -- Tales of Oddity Shops and Social Sharing

At first glance the patch notes for version five of Poetry Slammers don't seem all that large, but the pipeline for creating a new campaign circuit was deepening quite a bit. Whenever I added a new circuit, the following had to be created:

• 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

I didn't let that stop me from building an even larger pipeline for making a new circuit though . . . and as you'll see with future builds, that trend continues.

Mystic Curiosities, of course the owner wants to hear your poetry, my moody friend.

For the Oddity Shop circuit, Gingrr was based after another friend of mine at work, she has long red hair and loves the type of stuff you'd find in an oddity shop . . . little rocks, charms, and animal skulls. I ended up making Gingrr a kind of gothic looking werewolf. I doubled down and made this area have its own theme music as well. 

Gingrr loves adverbs like "happily"

This build was also the start of social sharing. I knew that what people are really going to want from this game is the ability to share their poems with others . . . and honestly, I figure it's my best shot at this game getting any kind of word of mouth. 

To encourage that, I added two ways to share. The first is a share button to the poetry making phase so you could grab a snapshot of your current board and share that out as a screenshot. The second was from the Wall of Fame. I added share button for each venue so you could share your favorite poem with a special squishmello variant of the skin you're wearing.

Squishmello Deej busting out poetry in a curiosity shop

Below are the complete patch notes for Version 5 of Poetry Slammers:

~~

Poetry Slammers v0.5 -- Oddity Shop Circuit & Social Sharing Update

• Welcome to the Oddity Shops!
• Added the new Oddity Shop campaign circuit, including 3 more shops and 15 more puzzles.
• Slam your poems in a new campaign-map exterior and performance-stage interior for the circuit.
• Meet  Gingrr, a red-haired wolf poet with a fondness for skulls, black roses, and dramatic verse. Gingrr is the new Oddity Shop judge and becomes unlockable after completing the circuit. Tread lightly, she loves adverbs!
• Social Sharing 
• There are now two places and two different ways to share your poetry
• Introducing Fridge Magnet Poem sharing!
• While constructing your Magnet poems, you'll find a new share button. When you click that button, your poem will be staged on one of ten randomly selected fridge/freezer backgrounds.
• Introducing Wall of Fame sharing!
• After you've favorited a poem and it shows up on your Wall of Fame, you'll now find a sharing button for each poem. When you click that button, you'll receive a photo card of your poem being slammed by a fun squishmello variant of your currently equipped poetry slammer skin along with the shop that poem represents.
• Two ways to share!
• Windows captures save to the Poetry Slammers folder in the standard pictures folder.
• Android uses the native share sheet for sending poem images to apps such as Discord or your favorite social media platform.
• Audio
• Added optional per-circuit Campaign Map music overrides.
• Circuits without a custom assignment continue using the default campaign music.
• Oddity Shop now uses its own spooky music track.

~~

With version five out of the way, version six would set up a whole new side mode that featured a brand-new way to play the game. More on that tomorrow!

Happy Dueling!

Poetry Slammers V4 -- A bunny and an alien enter the chat!

Version 4 added both content and changes that I felt were the next natural evolution of the prototype I was building. 

I asked a couple of friends at work what the next character should be for my campgrounds circuit. One of my friends at work is named Sue, but everyone calls her Yogi. I'm not sure how that nickname came to be, but Yogi loves bunnies more than any other animal in the world. She owns seven of them and makes yearly calendars featuring her bunnies. Her desk at work is covered with ceramic bunnies, plastic bunnies, bunnies made out of metal, etc. 

As we were talking it kind of became apparent who and what my next poetry judge would be modeled after. I actually reached out to my coworker in secret and asked her to give me some common phrases she says were and incorporated them as judge reactions to poetry, which is another thing I added in Version 4. Before, all judges shared the same pool of reactions to poems; now each judge had their own reaction pool so they would be more unique.

Yogi liked prepositions in this version of the game.

One thing that was a little weird was how the "Word Wheel" would create words that would then be used in the poetry phase, but . . . why? The answer to that was that the Word Wheel was really a Magnet Maker! In my mind, I was visualizing a sticky label maker that was making magnets instead of sticky labels. I added a little output tray next to the word wheel and a vibrating top piece to simulate the mechanical action of printing out a label when you made a word. Then, when you transitioned from the Magnet Maker phase to the Poetry Making phase, your magnets would rise up and slam down into position.

With a buzz and a shake, the magnet maker prints out magnets for your first five words

All mobile games need a shop of some kind, and now that I had a new "overflow" currency for when you really nailed both the Magnet Maker phase and the Poetry Phase, I needed a place to sell stuff to the player. I just want to take a moment here to say I almost gave up on the game at this point. I was having the absolute worst time trying to get ChatGPT to make a scrolling menu that didn't look broken. After a good night's rest, I woke up with an art answer that solved everything. I gave ChatGPT a pat on the virtual bum and said, nice try, but I got this.

Trey was the name of my new alien shopkeeper. For the first iteration of the shop, I decided to sell two buffs and an unlockable skin of the shopkeeper so you could play as him. 

Trey only has eyes for you

Whoa! I just realized I never explained the "Inspire me" button. Waaaay back in the initial prototype, I realized that a significant portion of players might just completely shut down at the poetry phase, not knowing what kind of poem they should make. I had my old boss from WIMO playing, and he called it "analysis paralysis." If you clicked the Inspire me button, the game threw down enough magnets to get you a two-star poem without you having to do any creative work at all. 

In this build, one of the buffs sold in the shop was an improved Inspire me button. What this did was make it so if you clicked the Inspire me button, the game would now throw down enough magnets to get you a four-star poem. There was also a buff he sold that would just automatically start you with a star word at the start of the poetry phase, saving you some stars in exchange for Happy Tears (the new overflow currency).

Also, for the tutorial, I decided to double down on the game's charm and added little three-panel comics at key points in the game to explain concepts to first-time players. There was a tutorial comic to introduce you to Slamtown, a tutorial comic to show you how to use the Magnet Maker, a tutorial comic about making a poem, and a tutorial comic about performing your poems.

Welcome to Slamtown!

And finally, I realized that the Align Magnets button from Version 3 actually made it so you couldn't add words between existing words without dragging and dropping every word, so I changed it to be a toggle.  Press the button once, it compresses the magnets. Press the button again, and it expanded all the magnets so you could throw words in between other words easily.

Here are the notes:

~~

Poetry Slammers v0.4 -- Campgrounds, Happy Tears, and a Whole New Shop

Poetry Slammers v0.4 adds a whole new circuit, more Slamtown personality, a new Happy Tears economy, temporary buffs, a shop, better score feedback, and a fair amount of mobile-friendly polish.

• Welcome to the Campgrounds!
• The Campgrounds circuit is now open!
• This brand-new expansion adds 15 more puzzles and poems to create, bringing the game up to 60 puzzle-poems across 12 Slam Spots.
• You can also unlock Yogi, the newest slammer in charge of the Campgrounds. She has her own judge personality, reactions, favorite word types, and campground-flavored commentary.
• The Word Wheel Is Now the Magnet Maker
• The old Word Wheel has officially been rebranded as the Magnet Maker.
• Your first five words now print out as little word magnets with some extra flair before joining the tray. It gives the puzzle phase more of a physical “making poetry supplies” feeling before you move into the writing phase.
• Judges Have More to Say
• Judges now give more specific challenges about the kinds of words they would love to hear in your poem.
• Use magnets from the requested category and you can earn a bonus star during your performance. The requested magnet rows get a little starburst treatment to help point you in the right direction without making the system feel too heavy-handed.
• You can also tap a Judge’s portrait on the campaign map to learn more about their personality and the kinds of words they prefer.
• Happy Tears and the New Shop
• Poems that go beyond a five-star performance can now earn Happy Tears, a new overflow currency.
• Your current currency total is always visible in the upper-left corner of the header, and the new Shop button can be found at the top center of the screen.
• Meet Trey, the alien slug shop assistant. 
• Trey is also a slammer and is happy to help you spend those Happy Tears on useful goodies and new unlocks.
• The shop currently includes:
• Trey Skin — unlock a new playable slammer.
• Star Word Buff — start each poem with one free Star Word for one hour.
• Better Inspiration Buff — Inspire Me will build a poem with enough scoreable magnets to earn at least a four-star base poem for one hour.
• New-Player Intro
• Starting the game fresh now introduces a little more of the world of Slamtown and what you are doing there.
• There are three new comic strips that teach the basics of the game without turning the opening into a giant wall of tutorial text.
• Better Score Details
• The Poetry Performance screen now provides a clearer breakdown of where your score came from.
• You can see the contribution from your poem itself, judge challenges, bonuses, and any Happy Tears overflow more clearly after a performance.
• Expand and Collapse Your Poem
• The old Align Magnets button has been upgraded into an Expand / Collapse toggle.
• Collapse your poem down when you want a clean reading view. Expand it again when you want to slip another magnet between existing words and keep shaping the poem.
• Mobile Polish
• This update also includes some mobile touch improvements:
• More forgiving touch targets for Magnet Maker letters.
• Larger invisible drag targets for especially short word magnets during the poetry-writing phase.
• Improved Star Word purchase feedback, including a clear “Out of Stars” message when you cannot afford one.

~~

Tomorrow we'll talk about version five, where social sharing came alive and a new circuit brought some spooky vibes to Slamtown.

Happy Dueling~ 

Poetry Slammers V3 -- Adding animation and clarification

Today I'm continuing my discussion of prototype patch notes for Poetry Slammers. Today: version three! 

Overall, the goal remained to help boost the charm of the game, and while creating fully animated characters wasn't in my grasp, I decided to make it a bit like the old web game gifs of the 90's where you imply animation through four or five character poses. The other option would have been to separate out arms, legs, and other features, then tween them between positions, but that seemed like a stretch for both me and ChatGPT.

Also, I had ChatGPT build a design tool where I could simply select the images I want, and it would build the animation and animators for me rather than having to do it manually. Having this tool would also help me ensure future characters in the pipeline would be simpler to animate as well.

Poetry Slammers Character Animation Builder Inside Unity

Beyond this, I had received a bit of feedback from a friend that thought my "10 cent words" would actually cost them 10-cents of real money, so I reworded them to be "Star Words." I also figured the phrase "10 cent words" was a dated phrase/concept that a lot of people just wouldn't get. 

Star Words, plurals, and possessives . . . a joy's private butterscotch . . .

Thirdly, not being able to make words plural or possessive was really bugging me, so I added a feature to put them in and sense when they were used. It's still a bit funny since you can pluralize plural words or make possessive words doubly possessive, which I suppose adds a kind of quirkiness that already exists in regular magnet poetry. 

When the oils soil and somehow prove the zephyr's rules . . .

Noting that I kept making longer and longer fridge poems because I was buying so many Star Words, I decided to add a button to collapse all the words and make space for more words. (I would eventually improve on that idea in the next build . . . more on that tomorrow . . .)

~~

Update notes v.003

This update focuses on making the poem board more expressive, playable, and fun to use while adding new character animations.

• Character Animations
• Poets and judges now feel more alive during performances. Characters can idle, speak during poem narration, and celebrate after a strong performance.
• Star Words
• The old “10-cent word” idea has been reworked into Star Words.
• Players can now use the Get Star Words button to spend a star and receive a fancy, flavorful word magnet for their poem. 
• When used, the button displays a small -1 Star popup, so the cost is clear.
• New Suffix Magnets
• Two new magnets have been added to the punctuation row:
• s
• 's
• These attach to the word immediately before them when the poem is performed.
• Examples:
• cat + s becomes cats
• box + s becomes boxes
• wish + s becomes wishes
• poet + 's becomes poet's
• Align Magnets Button
• A new Align Magnets button has been added to the poem board.
• This button tidies up the current poem by arranging placed magnets into cleaner rows while preserving their reading order. It also accounts for larger Star Word magnets so long words fit more naturally on the board.
• Better Parts of Speech Recognition
• The game’s part-of-speech categories were repaired and cleaned up.
• This improves random word generation and helps prepare the game for stronger poem-building and future judge systems.
• Other Improvements
• Improved poem text formatting during performance.
• Several UI buttons have been updated to better match the cute, crafted visual style.

~~

Happy Dueling!

Poetry Slammers V2 -- The Game finds its Voice

Continuing the patch note review for my upcoming game release of Poetry Slammers!

Three days after the first prototype, I was ready with more changes to share! Below are the patch notes for Version 2 (and Version 2.5). 

~~

Update notes V.002

• Character voices have been added! 
• Hear your Slammers speak.
• Updated "choose your Slammer" screen. Be sure to hit that "Mic check!" button to hear the voice that goes along with your selected skin.
• Reset button
• On the bottom left of the start screen you'll find a button to reset your play data to start a fresh new game. (will be removed for the full version of the game)
• Updated header. 
• Two new icons were added so that you can view your favorited poem and return to the identity screen.  
• There's also a running total of your stars you've earned and can now spend.
• When you first unlock a new coffee shop in the campaign map, a "now open" UI floats above it.
  New "Hint" button added to word creation screen. If you have stars to spend, you can trade a star for a hint to a word you may have missed.
• More free word tiles and punctuation tiles have been added. The intent is to give you more standard words to help flesh out your creations.
• New "Buy a 10-cent word" button. If you have stars to spend, you can trade a star for a special flowery word to really sell your poem. 
• These new words have a flashy label and appear in the new top magnet tray above the magnet board.
• Improved Poem performance!  
• After pressing the perform button, you'll find yourself on a stage, the lights dim, and a spotlight softly covers you in light. 
• You'll hear and see your slammer deliver their poem. 
• The lights come back on, and your judge gives their reaction, and you are awarded with stars for your performance.
• New interiors have been added to match the campaign you're currently in.
• New Library circuit
• 15 more puzzles to solve has been added
• Meet Styx, the wise judge of the library.
• Wall of Fame
• The Wall of Fame showing your favorite poem has a new look for your favorited poems.
• The shop your poem is displayed at, along with your poem and its star rating sit upon a label. 
• Scroll through your favorites here!

Update notes v.0025

• Android Build now available -- some minor graphic glitches but should work!

~~

I was so happy with the feedback from the first prototype that I was on fire and worked pretty hard to get a second version of the game out there to my friends and family ASAP. The base version of the game was working, but it was important to make this feel better in places where it came up short in the prototype. 

After playing the first prototype, it was pretty obvious that it was a MORAL IMPERATIVE that I add character voices and really improve the whole poetry performance phase. To those ends I started looking around at what was available in the Unity store and found a really good deal on an Animal Crossing-esque voice module and integrated it into the game. Adding a voice to the characters alone made them feel much more charming.

With that, it also became apparent that I couldn't just show the character reading the poem while the score was already showing. The performance phase needed some timing and pacing to make it feel fun. There needed to be the whole feeling of lights dimming, a spotlight shines on the character, they deliver the poem, the judge reacts, etc.

100 percent more presentation

Also, from the time I first thought of this idea, I knew I wanted to incorporate the ability to buy really fancy words. I remember being in poetry class back in college in the 90's and my professor introduced me to the term "10 cent words." As it was explained to me, poets that tried to get their poems published in newspapers and magazines used to look for the flowery words that publishers drooled over. In essence, poems that had "10 cent words" would make the publication sell better. So I added a special sticker for words that you could buy with stars and added a few dozen over-the-top words.

Buy ALL the 10 cent words!

At the time "stars" earn from making poems was the only available currency and actually worked pretty nicely here. After performing a couple poems, you had enough stars to start asking for hints when you were stuck making anagrams on the Magnet Maker and using stars to buy those fancy words for your fridge magnet poetry. This also gave extra motivation to try to earn more stars on your poems. (At the time, stars were only based on the number of words you used. In current builds, scoring has more logic to it.)

I also needed a place to keep and store your favorite poems, so the concept of the "Wall of Fame" emerged. Now you could play through five levels of a venue and end up choosing your favorite poem to "live" on the wall of that venue.

Finally, the idea of a campaign circuit and needing levels to play started to take shape. You start your adventures in the Coffee Shop circuit where you play through three coffee shop venues with five levels each.  After the coffee shop circuit came the Record Shop circuit. With the second build of the game I added the Library circuit. 

I'll just be reading poetry to Styx over here in the library

All of these circuits also have a poetry judge that represents them. In the Coffee Shop venues, you'll be judged by Feelixs the Beatnik Cat. In the Record Shop, you'll be judged by Claups, the soulful, one-eyed alien. With the library also came Styx, a crazy pink bird that also plays the drums besides chilling in the library.

Behind the scenes I also had AI helping me create a tool to make and import puzzle data. If it sounds like a lot of work for three days, it was, but like I said, I was on fire. Three days after that, version 3 was ready to rock . . . more on that tomorrow.

Happy dueling!

Introducing Poetry Slammers!

I posted back in June that I was solo dev'ing a hyper-casual mobile game that I had originally pitched to WIMO. I thought I'd take this opportunity to showcase my idea that became POETRY SLAMMERS!

Shenanigans I say!

Poetry slammers is a word game where you build words using a "magnet maker" and then use those magnets to create shareable magnet poetry. In essence, Wordscapes meets fridge-magnet poetry.

Classify the folio nostalgia accordingly, boo.

My Poetry Slammers concept was never made into a full-fledged pitch deck. I had a page of ideas that detailed things like Genre, Hook, Gameplay, Competitors, etc, but I never conducted a deep dive audience analysis, developed a taste map, detailed a tutorial, or any of the things that we normally would do to help flesh out an idea. This idea was just one of ten other ideas to see which one bubbled to the top for our execs. That said, I always thought this had potential even if it wasn't a hugely profitable idea that our company was willing to invest in.

Create at least five words and then start making poetry!

I've been uploading builds of the game to a password protected site and sending out links to a few friends and family to try out as I made playable builds of the game on Windows and Android. I'm currently on my 7th build of the game, and I think maybe I have only one or two iterations before I'm ready to share this publicly on an app store.

While creating this game, I've kept a pretty good log of my internal patch notes. Back on June 6th, I released my first build for friends and family:

Prototype Launch notes V.01

Poetry Slammers has reached its first playable prototype milestone.  This early version establishes the basic game loop: solve word puzzles, collect word magnets, build a poem, perform it, and receive a star rating from a judge.

• Core Features
• Word Wheel Puzzle
• Players can solve a word wheel puzzle by dragging through letters to form valid words.
• Completed words are tracked, and the puzzle can be finished once enough required words are found.
• Word Magnet Poetry Board
• After solving the word puzzle, players move into the poem-building phase.
• Words earned from the puzzle become draggable magnets that can be placed onto the poem board to create a custom poem.
• Perform Poem
• Players can perform their completed poem and move to a performance results screen.
• The game reads the poem from the placed magnets and formats it into a final poem text.
• Basic Star Rating
• Poems receive a simple star rating based on current scoring rules.
• This gives the prototype an early sense of completion and reward.
• Judge Reaction
• A judge provides a reaction after the poem is performed.
• Campaign Map 
• The first version includes the foundation for a campaign-style progression map, with nodes representing poetry locations.
• This establishes the structure for future circuits, unlocks, and themed content.
• Early Save/Progress Support
• Basic progress tracking is included so the game can remember completed content and earned stars.
• Prototype Goals
• Version 0.001 is focused on proving the core idea:
• Can a word puzzle feed into a poem-making board?
• Can players create something funny, strange, or charming with random magnets?
• Does performing the poem feel like a satisfying finish?
• Does the game loop feel worth expanding?

Over the next few days, I'd like to continue sharing the prototype patch notes and discuss how things have progressed since the first build. As noted in the post back in June, this is a game I'm using AI to help create: 

. . . and so, no one in the world would make this game but me ... so I might as well do it while recovering from Chemo. I threw on a blanket, sat in my computer chair, and shared my game idea with ChatGPT and I started chatting with AI about how to make this prototype, my overall vision for the game, and how it could help . . . 

I'm pretty excited to get this out there for those who love playing hyper-casual games like this. If making and sharing magnet poetry sounds fun to you, I hope you'll make room on your phone to give it a download and share a poem or two with your friends!