During the course of developing any game, there is always a long list of unknowns that can remain unsolved until end of your game development cycle: Will this feature provide a real benefit to the player over time? Will this new weapon work well, or cause the game to become unbalanced? How can we incorporate a certain game mechanic that makes the player want to come back for more?
The last question stuck in our minds while we plugged away at polishing GetClose. We thought we had a fun game, but we wanted to add in something that gave players a little more motivation to boot up GetClose. To be honest, we weren't exactly sure how to answer that question. It wasn't until we stumbled across an update from Nintendo, stating stamps were now available to us indie developers, that we had our answer.
For those of you unfamiliar with stamps, stamps were essentially Nintendo's answer to in-game achievements. While playing Wii UTM games, players could perform certain in-game progressions, earn points, defeat bosses, etc., to unlock stamps. After unlocking these stamps, players could then add them to their MiiverseTM posts. We believed it was quite an ingenious idea.
We were thrilled to learn that this feature had been made available recently and started implementing stamps into GetClose right away. There were a few minor technical hurdles, but implementation was fairly smooth.
GetClose now features 20 stamps that can be unlocked by collecting points from Food Items during matches. We also created a cool visual that alerts players during a game match that they have earned a new stamp; a first, for a Nintendo Framework game.
We can't wait to see players unlock all the stamps found in GetClose, and all the cool Miiverse drawings players will create.
GetClose is a 2 or 4 player quick-action, arcade-style game launching on the Nintendo eShop on Wii U soon for $4.99
