Theme of Belly Up Survey Team

This game originally started out as just a game jam game. I came back to it around a year later, just hoping to polish it up more so it’d look better on my portfolio.

I would’ve never expected what came next out of it.

One day, as I was showing my friends the progress of my game, we began to discuss potential features for the game that I could include for an update. An idea that really caught my attention was the addition of an “endless” mode. And boy, did that open a can of worms I couldn’t have imagined.

I hosted Belly Up on Github Pages, half because it was easier to automate updates than itch.io, and the other half because Github wouldn’t get blocked by the school’s firewall so me and my friends could play it during class (sorry Mr. Hernandez…).

Every build of the game I would do would get instantly pushed to Github Pages, which would have the game running within minutes on the newest version. This was extremely helpful for rolling out endless mode.

I released endless mode in pieces. Biweekly I would make more progress on Endless mode, adjusting the enemy health or player damage here and there to see what “metas” (Most Effective Tactic Avaliable) were enjoyable to play.

This began a live-service cadence with me and my friends, all of us gathering after class to discuss what was fun or horrible about the new updates I would release. Were the blobfishes too overpowered? Did the single-shot feel like a peashooter and there was no reason to use it? Should we just remove swordfish from the game entirely?

This tiny microcosm of live service development extremely fascinated me. I loved every second of it, iterating, testing, and getting feedback on a game that I was working on for the amusement of myself and my friends. Some of my favorite nights in high school were when we’d randomly break out into discussion about the game after a hangout. They just talked about it like it was any other game, up there with League of Legends and VALORANT.

Live service development is fascinating. I’d love to explore it more.