The Gameplay Is Done. Now I'm Sending a Bot Into a Few Thousand Dungeons.

Milestone achieved!

I think we've hit a big one: the actual gameplay in Swordoku: Grid & Glory is done.

I'm going to enjoy saying that before testing turns up something with opinions.

There have been lots of small tweaks and polish passes, and this morning the bosses got special lighting, music, and some cinematic camera work for their encounters. If something horrible is about to try to kill you, it might as well get a proper entrance.

First, stop standing in the campfire

There are a couple of final scene checks to do, particularly making sure dungeon props sit where they should and don't intersect with the player model.

An adventurer standing inside a campfire is a little distracting. Especially if nobody seems concerned about it.

Then comes the important part: testing. The mechanics being in place doesn't tell me whether the whole journey is balanced, so we're going to give it a fairly thorough workout.

The new tester has a very long shift

The plan is to build a bot that can play through a few thousand dungeons and help test gameplay and balance.

That needs to be more than a machine that places pieces and hits monsters. It'll also have to handle equipment upgrades, sell off junk, and choose useful permanent ability upgrades at the Shrine.

In other words, it needs to work through the progression around combat as well as the combat itself. Otherwise we're only testing part of the game.

There's a bit of work involved in teaching the bot to do all that. But it should give us a much better idea of how the systems hold together before we plan a release.

No lunch breaks, no complaints about the dungeon decor. I have high hopes for this employee.

The remaining little things

After that, most of the remaining work is the smaller finishing stuff: credits, the Help screen, sounds for menu buttons, and putting haptic feedback in the right places.

I'm keeping vibration limited. A little feedback where it helps is good. The phone doesn't need to register its enthusiasm for every single thing you do.

So we're nearly there. Testing will tell us how nearly, but this is a really good place to be, and I'm excited to finish it up.

Naturally, part of my brain has already started looking at the next project.

I have a few existing ideas competing for attention, plus the ever-present temptation to start something new. I haven't decided where to go yet. Whatever it is, I need something that gets me excited and keeps pulling me back to work on it.

Apparently the project list alone isn't sufficient. It needs to be emotionally persuasive.

Am I really considering Apple again?

There's another possibility I've been turning over: an Apple release.

This is awkward, because I don't like Apple devices.

I don't own one now. At least two Mac minis and two iPads have passed through my hands and gone straight back out through Marketplace. Someone once gave me a brand-new Apple Watch, still boxed. I didn't even open it before selling it.

We have a consistent relationship: the device arrives, and I arrange for it to leave.

But I'm wondering whether bringing Swordoku to the App Store would be worth the annual developer fee and the work involved. Cloud saves, logins, purchases, ads, and the rest of the platform integration would all need attention.

Then I'd need access to actual Apple hardware for testing. One possibility might be an exchange student's iPhone, if that turns out to be practical and they're happy to help. I haven't worked through that process yet.

My other hesitation is visibility. Another crowded storefront doesn't automatically mean anyone will discover the game. Taking on another platform is a lot less appealing if the result is simply getting buried in a second place.

So that's a possibility I'm weighing up, not an announced platform.

For now, the next job is getting a bot ready to spend an unreasonable amount of time in dungeons.

And making sure the adventurer isn't standing in the fire when it starts.