Making First Person Stapler was specifically an exercise in time management and controlling feature creep. I tried to be very strict with myself about what I could and couldn’t add into the project, and how long I could spend on ideas until I cut them.
To illustrate this, I thought I would go over the changes from the first sketch out for the Lobby and the final set up.
Immediately, there are two glaring problems with original Lobby design, the balcony and the stairs.They both broke the more important rule for this project; don’t spend time on assets that only appear once.
The open balcony wouldn’t have been the end of the world to make. It might even have added a lot of interesting verticality to the level, but it also would have meant modeling and texturing a unique ceiling and floor, making a railing asset, and specifically making one that can fit the 135 degree angle of the stupid angeled wall that I really wanted for some reason. So, the balcony got cut. It would have looked cool, but it would have turned the build time for the first level from one evening to maybe three. So, the balcony got cut and replaced with a boardroom.
The stairs were a mistake I decided to make, even though I realized pretty early that I didn’t have any plans for multi-sory levels in the future. It was an inefficient use of time, but I liked the stairs and decided to waste the time, but i did end up making use of them later on the Warehouse level and the Renovation level. So, I guess this one barely fell on the right side of the one-use rule.
Aside from that, the whole level got elongated, more pillars got added, walls got weird little niches added, more and more furniture got piled in. The game is basically hide and seek, so I needed to keep adding variation to the level to add places for the targets to be hidden. Thankfully, I’d built the level out of fairly modular parts, and I was able to make a lot of changes very quickly.
Anyway, this has been a quick overview on how and why the first level of First Person Stapler evolved as the game progressed. Thanks for reading. Check out the game on Steam to wander around the level yourself, or join the discord to ask random strangers about the first level.
