Stellata Waterway started as a recreation of certain systems and mechanics from one of my favorite games as kid (and still), Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil. Specifically, my design is directly based on the first phase of the game's final boss.
I started with the space and movement system, trying to recreate aspects of Klonoa's design that I liked. One was the movement around the tunnel, which has a certain sense of inertia. The tunnel and camera don't immediately rotate to center the player and they don't immediately stop rotating when the player stops moving to the side. Another was the camera position, which is slightly below the tunnel's center and angled slightly downward, which compared to a centered and forward facing camera, as I first tried, is more readable and makes the space feel larger.
But for various parts of the movement system, I chose to stray from Klonoa's design. Klonoa is a rather slow game which suits its tone. But I was interested in making something more action-oriented, so the player moves much faster than in Klonoa. Likewise, Klonoa has a midair "flutter" mechanic that aids slow, deliberate platforming. That didn't feel suited to what I was making, so I left it out. In general, as my game came together, it started to form its own identity and I moved away from simply recreating a reference. I did, however, arrive at a similar double jump system to Klonoa, though more organically than as a recreation.
Coming up with the double jump system was a memorable moment to me in "finding the fun" in a system. I had implemented nearly every other mechanic in the game and while testing just happened to hit a star while midair. It was immediately obvious that doing so should give the player another jump. This mechanic became a central part of what makes the game fun and challenging. It's by no means an innovative mechanic (plenty of platformers including Klonoa feature similar mechanics), but the way I arrived at it through making and testing is a process I hope to repeat.
The last thing I made was the level. As another game made in one week, making a boss or a level with a satisfying end seemed out of scope, so I decided to again diverge from Klonoa and create an infinite runner. I designed a basic level that could loop, added a scoring system to provide a clear goal, and linked the score to the player's speed as a basic difficulty ramp. There are a few issues with the design, such as level readability at high speed and extreme bias towards certain scoring strategies, but there's nothing beyond fixing and things mostly function as I'd hoped.
Of all of my games, this is the one I probably enjoy playing the most, which I don't think means it's better (certainly it's hard to properly enjoy narrative, puzzle, or other one-time-experience games as their designer, but that doesn't mean they're worse), but it's a valuable observation to make in developing my design process. I enjoy action-oriented games and I can apparently make one, at least to my own taste, yet I have rarely made such games. If I want to make more action-oriented games, I need to question what about my current circumstances, intuitions, and processes as designer might be drawing me away from doing so.
One idea is that I often get caught up in the idea of having a higher concept or purpose for the game than simply to be fun. I avoided that thinking with Stellata Waterway because it was intended as just a mechanical homage. Instead of concept, I was able to focus on small features and interactions that I enjoyed, and I found that even without a driving concept, new and interesting ideas came out of the processing of making. Maybe if I want to make more games like this, I need to think less conceptually and just incrementally build on small features that excite me.
Since finishing this game, I've also enjoyed hearing what games it reminds people of. People have likened it to Vectrex games, a sequence in Spyro the Dragon, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. While none of those were on my mind when making this, it's interesting to see more instances of what I've come to call "tunnel runners" as a relatively uncommon spatial system.