PRODUCTION
I designed and developed Playing Peggle At 3 A.M. alone in about one week, using Clickteam Fusion.
THE GAME
Playing Peggle at 3 A.M. is a short game about that moment when you are so down that the only possible activity to match your mood is playing Peggle very late at night until your eyes close... well maybe that's not that universal a situation, but the game reproduces the feeling quite well!
DESIGNER'S COMMENTARY
Playing Peggle at 3 A.M. was born as a conceptual game during one of my "down" moments, trying to recapture the aimlessness of... well, of playing Peggle throughout the night while listening to depressing music.
I think that the game is fairly successful at what it tries to do, despite being inherently a "small" experience. The most interesting iteration I made on it was probably when I decided to put the "rhythm counter" on the ball. The game was intended from the start as a pseudo rhythm game, but in the original version the rhythm counter stayed in the top section of the screen. I really didn't like that, as it trivialized the Peggle elements, making them not only ludically, but also aesthetically irrelevant. To put it simply I wanted the player to look at the whole screen and to have to move their eyes, because just staring at the peggle shooter in order to keep with the rhythm would have been a bit boring. The solution I found in the end, as it can be witnessed in the finished game, is attaching the rhythm counter to the ball, which I think made for a very pleasant and generally cool-looking mechanic.
