Become a tomato, get back to your shelf, slash other vegetables!
A quick Unity prototype of game mechanics for Grocery Clash before making the actual game on our custom engine.
Prototype early. I cannot stress this enough. Look for the biggest unknown and make it the first thing to test. Mitigate the risk. Cut corners wherever it’s possible. Don’t over-engineer. Find your ways to do it quickly. Maybe choose different engines, make mockups, fake the features, make it on paper, show only a video of how you play, hack the code, or be a narrator and voice-over of missing features. There are many options, choose what suits you! Remember, the prototype is going to be thrown in the trash anyway, so don’t push it.
In the case of Grocery Clash, we were about to make a game on our own tech, so checking the gameplay beforehand was a crucial step - it would take months to see the game in action otherwise. I made a quick test in Unity, tweaked the systems and we could enter making the proper version with much bigger confidence. A small prototype done in one week prevented us from failing six months later.
Please, make prototypes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pUuaDErXNE&list=PLYwteNHU43UI38meb4QUuie9Ld9NxMXSZ&index=11