We’re less than a week out from the release of the new WarioWare, and I’m more excited for it than any other game that’s released this year. I’ve been playing the demo every day since it dropped last week, and I’ll probably keep playing it until it releases on Friday. Not only am I impressed with the amount of content produced just by 16 games and 6 characters, but it’s incredible how well-designed these 16 games are in terms of providing variety to the different characters. Some games are easy with specific characters and nightmares with others. There are certain traps you have to watch out for when playing as specific characters that others won’t have to deal with. The more you play, the more you notice the similarities and differences between characters that change how you play. Cricket and Kat can both jump the same height, but Kat can’t stop jumping and has great horizontal reach. Mona and 18-Volt both throw projectiles, but Mona’s is controlled while 18-Volt’s move in a straight line. Cricket is the only one of the original 6 that runs on the ground, so I’m curious if he will be the fastest runner. My best crew is Wario, Orbulon, and Cricket with a score of 140. I’m planning to test out all of the combinations to see which one gets the highest score. That should be interesting.

In terms of my work, I’ve started the process of adding new aliens to my site. It’s always difficult at first to get back into the swing of it since I still haven’t committed all of my vocabulary to memory. I have to constantly reference my design page to make sure I’m not mixing up my terminology with official terminology. After this month, we should be at 90 aliens, and the plan is to add 10 more next month to make it an even 100.

I’m still planning to release chapter 4 of Wakeup Call next month as well. I’ve got the script drafted out, and I’ve started doing some sketching. I’m planning to start drawing up some panels today. Here’s hoping WarioWare doesn’t distract me too much from getting that finished. I need to remember that I have one less day to work this month than last month.

In terms of the three main projects (since my fourth is on hiatus for the moment), my simulator is the area where I’m floundering the most. I’m back to reconsidering the core foundation of what it is. What kind of experience do I want to have from it? How do I make it enjoyable to develop while still keeping it fun to watch? What does combat look like? What features support the combat and make it “venture” rather than another combat simulator? And then most importantly, how do I give each character personality so that they feel different from one another? I got a piece of advice from Ster last night that might just help me out there: Let there be things that certain characters can do which others can’t. That’s what prevents them from feeling like a bunch of colorless blobs that can be swapped out for one another. I think if I make use of unique actions, sigils, and items, I can find a way to make it work. Looking back on my previous simulator, that was definitely a key factor in making them feel different. I think I’m still stuck on trying to get the character to be exactly like they are in their base game as much as possible that I’m not effectively translating the spirit of their character into my system. Gonna take some time today to work on that as well.

Check out the new WarioWare if you haven’t seen it yet, or even if you’ve never played a WarioWare game. I think it’s a fantastic bit of game design for general analysis. Make the most!