The controls for the original ‘Omubozu’, before we got our hands on it, featured a pretty standard Shmup control scheme. The player used the WASD keys for movement, making the small fishing boat move forward, backward, left and right. Reading the original document, I felt like this method was a bit of a lost opportunity. It simply didn’t feel like controlling a boat.
This is the old control scheme. The fishing boat would continually point and move upward. Steering the boat left and right would cause it to ‘strafe’ in a way that, to me, did not feel very boat-like. These controls had to go.
The first thing that was removed was the auto-scrolling. The game no longer forced the player to move forward a la Gradius or 1942. Instead, the player can move freely in 360 degrees anywhere he/she wants on an endless ocean.
The strafing controls were removed and a turning axis was added in its place. The player now turns the boat gradually left and right, as if steering with a rudder. The steering is also slow and sluggish, just like a boat is.
In the original concept, the player could instantly go forwards and backwards, both at the same exact speeds. This does not feel very boat-like either, so it was changed.
We came up with a gear system. The boat now had 5 distinct gears that the player could freely switch between with the W- and the S-button. Starting at gear 0, the engine is put into neutral and the boat stands still. The player cannot move while in this gear, it is just made for stopping. When pressing W, the player kicks into first gear, going on to second and third. Every gear stage makes the boat move faster but also makes turning it slower and less precise. By pressing S, the player switches one gear down. Going below neutral and into -1 kicks the boat into reverse. Going backwards is significantly slower than going forwards due to the propeller not being as efficient, like on a real ship. There’s also only one gear for reversing.
|——–|——–|——–|——–|
-1 0 +1 +2 +3
These changes proved to make the game a lot more interesting. The game no longer felt like Gradius with a boat skin on top of it, it felt like there was a reason for the setting. It felt like the controls and the setting worked together and benefited from each other in a way.
Teo's game design blog. 
Hi Teodor,
First off, your text has a structure that makes it easy follow your arguments and your trail of thought. It’s well conveyed why you wanted to redesign the movement and even more so as you gave examples of what you were striving for, and what you tried to avoid in form of already existing titles. The work process is well strung together with the text’s structure and the idea of using gears in the movement feels like a creative solution. It may not be an advantage to the player but will probably really enhance the experience.
I’m sure that the way that you took a more realistic approach instead of sticking with the ordinary easy route will be an interesting read for other designers.
All in all, an interesting read and I’m looking forward to seeing how it plays out in practice and not just in theory. Keep up the good work.
Maximilian Kassander, Group Mimic
GillaGilla