How do I miss the Obvious ?

Some times I am surprised by my own idiocy. I guess I could try and cover my ideas with the rational of trying so hard to be creative, to try and streamline the process for a player.

In the end I really need to just see the trees and not the wood. As you can imagine this kind of situation has occurred once more.

Let me digress...

I have been trying very hard to make the start of Very Bunny Haha be as simple and obvious as possible. Trying hard to make it so people can simply get into the game immediately and all distractions and choices are supposed to appear at just the right time, one that makes so much sense I do not know why others have never done it before. To this end I have spent way too much time and brain power trying hard to achieve this end.

A couple of days ago I was chatting with my daughter Leilani about how to synchronize the start of the game with offering a tutorial and how to make this as seamless as possible. When she Whammo'd me with such obviousness, such ease I was.. as I said, Whammo'd.

She said 'Hey Dad, why not have a start menu  for people to just select the tutorial or not'.

GAH! was probably my reaction.

I have spent so much time trying to not have a start menu, that I never ever thought along the way how much easier that could be. Now of course thinking about all the options I need it solves so many for me. such as allowing a player to have multiple save games and being able to load them. Start up a new game from scratch or many many other options that are best displayed as a menu/list.

So my daughter just cut through months of my hard work to find the answer that so many other game designers before me have done.... this one just took a while.

I expect I shall be working on that very soon now. As I have just finished the Inventory selling functionality.

Laters
Da Voodoochief