The Unexpected Challenge

Beyond the Code

For months, I poured all my technical skills into building a proper game engine and handling the many subtleties of gameplay — from ship controls to collision detection. I knew this would be tough, and I was ready for the challenge.

What I didn’t expect, however, was that the hardest part wouldn’t be technical at all. The real struggle, for the whole team, turned out to be finding the right gameplay.

Fun Above All

A game has to be fun, first and foremost. Players should want to keep playing, to go for “just one more run.” Stunning visuals, amazing music, smooth animations… none of that matters if nobody wants to play more than once. That’s been our core principle from the very beginning: Better a rough-looking game that’s incredibly fun than a gorgeous game with no reason to replay.

The problem? We quickly realized that game design is its own profession — a skill none of us really had!

The hardest part wasn’t programming, art, or music — it was intellectual: deciding what the actual game would be. What phases of play should exist? What bonuses, penalties, weapons, or enemies? Even the level design is part of this huge equation.

To guide ourselves, we looked to the greats. Strangely enough, Mario Kart was a huge inspiration. Our goal was to create something that delivers the same sense of fun and accessibility as Mario Kart, combined with the tension and mind games of a Street Fighter II match.

Based on this, we started brainstorming the gameplay : level design, health bars, power-ups, special moves, mechanics to help weaker players get back into the race... 

Breaking Away From “Shmup"

Another major challenge: making sure players don’t mistake Vector F for a shoot ’em up. On the surface, it has all the visual codes: side-scrolling, parallax backgrounds, ships, enemies… It looks dangerously close to “just another shmup.”

Our solution? No bullets. In the story, racers are prisoners thrown into high-speed ships — giving them permanent weapons wouldn’t make sense. At most, players can pick up temporary items like a missile or a laser, but that’s it. No constant shooting, no bullet spam. Yes, enemies can be destroyed, but not in the traditional shmup way.

The Road Ahead

So far, we’ve built most part of the engine and laid down the foundations.  But in terms of gameplay design, we’re still at the beginning. Balancing fun, challenge, and originality is a puzzle we haven’t solved yet — and it’s one of the toughest part of making Vector F.

Stay tuned — the next entry will dive into the first real gameplay tests, the moments that made us question everything… and the breakthroughs that kept the dream alive.