Purity: Post Mortem

Protect your fragile heart from the infectious impurities!
(This was a pretty small game all in all, so there’s not a whole lot to say.)

I had a really tough time coming up with a game idea this time around, so instead of focusing on the gameplay, I started out by making some visual experiments without any real goal in mind. One of them was a nice little blob controller thing, and I ended up building the whole game around that.

Progress of Purity’s gameplay: I spent most of the time playing with variations on pushing and pulling the surface of the blob. The infection/regeneration mechanic was actually the last thing to be implemented despite being the only thing that makes it a game.

Progress of Purity’s visuals: Started off way too funky, then toned it down and narrowed the palette. Finished it off by adding the central heart and throwing a layer of blue on top of everything.

What went right:

• Simple mechanics + procedural patterns meant I wasn’t too pressed for time
• Audio-visual damage indication worked pretty well and helps to sell the “infection” aspect
• Nice aesthetic

What went wrong:

• Lost time trying to get text to render legibly
• Never got around to meaningfully tying the patterns to the audio
• Only had one other person test it out, so I have basically no idea if the difficulty curve is reasonable/fun

Play Purity!