Vernacademia Season 1: Episode 10: Highway to the Moon Part 4: The Design

Part four of our talk about the development of Vernacular Games' first title, Highway to the Moon. Here we discuss elements of the game's core design and our reasoning behind many of the design decisions we made.

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Cliff Notes:

0:25 HTTM is a Twin Stick Schmup
1:36 Aiming in All Directions
2:40 "Jacob's Highway"
3:11 Handling the Road
5:00 Player Actions
5:57 Game Actions against the Player
7:17 Design Shift: From Jump to Phase
10:11 The Impact of Defensive Actions
12:23 Higher Skill Ceiling
12:51 The Purpose of Points
16:40 Player Failure Handling
19:10 Weapon Design
20:09 The Shotgun and Fire Rhythm
22:04 Passive vs. Active Charge
24:20 Laser Rifle
27:10 Grenade Launcher
28:35 Double Machine Gun
31:03 Secret Weapons
31:36 Dialogue Destruction
33:19 Evolving Drop Tables
34:20 Boss Design
35:32 Meta Design
38:40 Wrap Up :: Iterative Design
40:54 Sign Out