After I got all the technical “bits” of Game Center working for the Leaderboard and Achievement System for Last Call, it came time to design an achievement system for the game. As soon as I started with it, I found out that it was a lot more complex then what I initially imagined.

From the technical standpoint, an achievement system gets into all parts of your code from the scoring system and level progression to the power-ups. It’s bewildering everywhere and QA testing it is going to be a bitch.

From the design standpoint, I can’t wrap my head around what other than ‘wow! I finished that” you get from an achievement system. Other games give you a virtual reward but right now I balancing out my potential rewards with what additional content I can scrape together (or beg borrow and steal). Here are some examples of some achievement I am thinking of implementing:

Story Mode:

• Finish story mode
• Clear 10,20,40,80 customers
• Purchase all bar upgrades
• Purchase all flair upgrades
• Purchase all drink upgrades
• 3FER 1,5,10,20,40,80 (3 same drinks in a row)
• 4FER 1,5,10,20,40,80 (4 same drinks in a row)
• 5FER 1,5,10,20,40,80 (5 same drinks in a row)
• Money Achievement (200,400,800,1600,3200)
• Flairless finish (Don’t use any special powerups)

Arcade(Normal)

• Time achievements (1 minutes, 2 minutes, 5 minutest 8 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes)
• Play X minutes without losing a customer (30 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes, 4 minutes)

There are a mind-boggling more that I could implement. Yikes! There must be a dancing monkey in this some where.