Party Poopers Windows, Mac game

What’s New?

1. 4 display build
2. Punishment for submitting wrong code
3. Enhanced transitions and cutscenes
4. New character model for team 2 infiltrator
5. More animations
1. Animation on Camera Op screen for receiving new part of combination
2. Guard animation when catching attendee
3. Ending animations for winning and losing team
6. More sounds:
1. Jewel collection
2. Safe alarm
3. Hacking process
4. Closing safe
5. Party ambiance

What’s the Motivation?

The main goal of this week was polishing many of the already existing features in the game.

The most important change we made this week was porting player views to 4 displays. In past playtest sessions, players would screen peek and wait for the other team to find tablets, removing that team’s challenge of searching for the combination.

In the last iteration, there was no consequence for submitting a wrong code. This allowed players to brute-force the combination. In this iteration, the guard is alerted once a wrong combination has been submitted, deterring players from brute-forcing their way into solving the safe’s combination.

To enhance game-play experience, we added options for players to skip the long introductory cutscene and quickly re-play when the game ends. This will be especially important when we present our game at showcase.

We added a new character model for team 2 infiltrator to help camera op players distinguish their teammates.

There were key moments in the game that lacked impact; these moments include the guard catching an attendee, teams obtaining a part of the combination, and the game’s ending. Animations were created in order to give these moments more juice. In this iteration, when an attendee gets caught by a guard, they can see the guard actually trying to grab them. To make it more clear that the team’s camera op received a part of the safe’s combination, we added an animation on the camera op screens to signify the hacking process. We made the game’s ending more dramatic by adding victory and defeated animations to the respective attendees.

Additionally, the game had many sounds, but they were not balanced with each other - some sounds couldn’t be heard over the main background music, and some sounds overpowered others.

What’s Next?

1. Enhance/customize house interior and exterior
2. Add more player models so setting feels more like a party
3. Add more levels (different houses, new hacking challenges)
4. Develop split audio solution
5. Offer more interactions between and within teams
6. We are preparing for our showcase on 11 December 2018 which may involve a slightly modified build for presentation