Determining How Long Powerup Effects Should Last
Game balance is crucial to the user experience and determining how long a power up should last is an important part of that balance. Tuning of powerups and weapons can take a game from too easy to too hard. Game development is as much about game design and planning out your mechanics beforehand can be helpful in avoiding development delays.
Sometimes unintended consequences can occur between spells and mechanics. Have a look at a classic example in Final Fantasy 7. The games hardest bosses and the end boss can be ruled practically harmless by a strategy of using the Mime Materia and Knights of the Round as shown in the video below.
This is an example of why you must be thinking about balance from the start. The Final Fantasy example could have been avoided with limits on the mime materia. We won’t always catch these issues at development so it is also important to design with modularity and expansion in mind.
Let’s look at our shield power from the 2D Space Shooter. We collect the powerup which enables our shield and the shield lasts indefinitely…
