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Project Takeaways ~ Finding My Style
Developing Slide Squares was a personal journey into finding my style as an artist and designer.
The minimalistic approach to design since Slide Squares has inspired. an emphasis on the essentials, both visually and experientially.
The minimalism in Slide Squares is not only a visual style, but also a design philosophy.
The squares and red, blue, yellow color palette seen in the final version of the game started as simple art to test early versions of the game, but worked so well that they ended up sticking. In this case, less is more.
Why Red, Blue, and Yellow ( RBY )?
The simple answer was to make the game more accessible to my cousin who's red-green colorblind.
I initially thought about going with red, green, blue ( RGB ), as it's the three colors I see most often when programming / creating art, but wanting my cousin to try the game led me to red, blue, and yellow ( RBY ). I knew having him test the game with red and green blocks would make the experience more difficult, if not unplayable, so the resulting contrast between red, blue, and yellow would better allow him to experience the game fully.
Later in development, I stumbled upon De Stijl / Neoplasticism ( an art movement that stylistically uses white, black, and primary colors - red, blue, and yellow ), which inspired and shaped the visual style of Slide Squares to only use white, black, red, blue, yellow, as the game's colors. The game was already utilizing those colors at the time, so I figured Slide Squares could evolve into an interactive version of what the De Stijl / Neoplasticism movement aims to represent visually.
In retrospect as a more experienced designer, I realize that I could have used shapes within each color to convey their differences in color to emphasize the differences even more. So while changing colors may not have been the most optimal way to make Slide Squares more accessible, it happened to lead me to a visual style that shaped the aesthetics of the game.
Only show what needs to be seen for the player to understand what to do.
Over time, I found that this minimalism became an important element to communicate with the player. The positions and colors of the squares in each level are placed purposefully to help guide the player towards the puzzle's solution.
Why Squares?
Project Takeaways ~ Letting a Game Be Done
The development of Slide Squares was an on and off process for 3 years ( 2014 - 2017 ). Through its development, it was a project that was constantly re-coded, redesigned, and reinvented. There was probably a version of the game about a year into development that resembles the game that exists today ( of which I could have called finished ), but I didn't trust myself at the time to let the game be finished.
Being the first game I released, I had this false sense that it had to be a perfect, groundbreaking experience or I would be a failure starting my career.
There came a point in Slide Squares development where I realized I could continue tweaking the game forever. As I grew better as a designer and programmer, the game could continue to grow along side me.
When I released Slide Squares in 2017, I knew there were areas that could still be improved. But it was time to move on for now. To appreciate the lessons learned and celebrate that the game was finished to a quality that I could be proud of.
The lesson: Finish and release your first game, even if it's not perfect. It won't be anyways, and getting rid of that pressure of it needing to be good will let you get to your next project, which is going to have a headstart with all the experience you got from this one.
