Blog Post
Rebots Roundup #8
In this week’s Rebots roundup, we are going to talk about shops.
Shops are an important feature in any game because they support and gate progression for players, provide them opportunity for upgrades and it’s a great place to sneak in some worldbuilding by interacting with the shopkeepers to learn more about the world. So when we set out to build the shops we also had some criteria on what shops should accomplish:
- Show the player what they are buying
- Show why they need whatever they are buying
- Show what something costs
- Show how much currency the player has (not just money!)
We have quite some things in Rebots that we would like players to unlock as they progress through the game so we knew we need shops such as
- Supervisor hiring
- Garage (Ship upgrades)
- Buy/Sell resources
- Gadget shop (Player upgrades)
- Hauler shop
- Outfitter (Rebot upgrades)
- Salon (Rebot cosmetics)
Before creating concept art, our game designer John has sketched out some drafts for how the shops in general could look like and what potential alternative views we might need to consider.
Once these sketches were made, we also created concept art on how this might look to fit the style of the game. Our design is something similar to the design we are using in our dialogue UI or asteroid selection UI – something we dubbed “bubbly UI”.
The idea with these different “bubbles” is that the shop layout is readjustable and customizable for different use cases, yet still maintains a consistent look.
We had quite some discussions about using icons vs text, but for now we’ve settled on using text for the time being but since we have icons for most of the things in the game, that’s something that we might change down the line.
Finally, see some screenshots of how the shop UI looks like in the game for the different shops: (screenshots of resource shops, upgrade shop, supervisor hiring, gadget shop (need to be taken during the tutorial), hauler shop).
There are lots of opportunities for the next iteration of the shops that we’ll be considering in the future for example
- Opening new shops for Rebots upgrades and cosmetics
- Implementing AI for the shopkeepers so they follow the implied position of the player
Eager to learn more?
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