Game: Jellies
Design (what I set out to do): I began with few jellyfish sprites that moved and were all different colors, sizes and patterns. I made a mechanic that let the player guide them with the mouse, and I wanted to make a game out of it. After not quite knowing what to do, I finally settled on a maze game where the player had to guide the jellyfish through an obstacle course as quickly as possible without touching the sides. The game would be harder than expected, since the jellyfish randomly wander off when not being guided, so the player has to keep tabs on multiple things at once.	What Didn't Get Done:   I had wanted to have a lot of levels and mazes, but coming up with good-looking mazes that were all different was the hardest part. I’d also really wanted to implement two other types of jellyfish at some point, but never got around to it. I’d also wanted to put in moving hazards of some sort, or even hazards that chased the jellyfish, but these would be harder to code than the jellies themselves, so I focused on finishing the bulk of the game, first.
Biggest Challenge:   The biggest challenge was getting the jellyfish to spawn (appear on the screen) correctly. At one point, they would keep multiplying every time I played; I was supposed to have three, but I ended up with four and then six and then twelve. I traced this back to a glitch within scratch itself - for some reason, a “repeat X times” block wasn’t working properly. When I took it out and simply repeated the spawn blocks three times, the problem was solved. It took me a long time to figure out, though. Another problem was the jellies appearing over menus and then getting confused as they changed. I had to create variables to manage when the jellies appeared or disappeared.	What's Next: I don’t know if I’ll finish this game completely… I started out really liking the randomness of the sprites and their generation script; each jellyfish was a little different. However, I’m not a big fan of the gameplay, so I may make another project that’s simply a non-game, interactive art piece. I might re-visit many a childhood by making some kind of virtual pet game (even though jellyfish are very boring to care for…) For now, I’m going to keep the game in the back of my mind until I come up with a better idea for it. I might, however, use a similar mechanic of color/size/pattern-changing for another game.