Hello! Marcos blogging time.

Me and minigames go way back. We've been friends for as long as I can remember. Whether Mario Party, or DK64, or what have you, we shared a lot of good memories. But now... I'm not so sure about our relationship. Minigames have proven to be difficult to develop.

Jokes aside, it's been a fun few weeks learning and researching about small side-games that stand a little in the shadows of their big-time "main" games. Writing out a list, deciding on a good few that wouldn't be too difficult to start with, then starting to develop them has been a fun part of the process. I managed to pull through with a number guessing game in just a few days for a build we had to submit, and it worked out pretty well, as ugly as the UI was.

I'm currently developing (name temporary) Boulder Drop, our minigame that will have the players run in an arena dodging big boulders hurling at them. I chose this game because while it shouldn't be the most time consuming to implement, it does allow for adrenaline and excitement to spark player's interests and make the game more fun.

I'm using the opportunity to learn about blueprint interfacing, a concept I hadn't touched on before. While scary, it does provide an easy way to decouple references and big blueprints that would otherwise be a headache to implement. Then all I have to do is spawn boulders that move, hit players, and show a UI. Easy, right...? 

Regardless, I plan to have this game finished by the start of next week. Let's see what Unreal throws at me to stop that from happening.

Cheers,
Marcos Camacho from Ctrl Alt Defeat