What’s New?
Major Changes:
- Added cannon charging indication and juice for sucking out soul energy from pirates
- Fire extinguisher can now be depleted and replenished
- Added dizzy indication when the Ghost is hit by a hammer
- Added objective in a scene transition between Login Screen and Tutorial
- Added a voting system to skip tutorial (all players need to agree to skip)
- Improved Tutorial scene for the pirates: Pirate Tutorial now has two rooms, each for one pirate to learn the game
Minor Juice Improvements & Fine Tuning:
- Decrease cannon charge rate to make gameplay more balanced
- Fixed crosshair movement bug when Ghost is frozen and cannon is activated
- Changed molotov explosion when thrown from inside a wall
- Cannon charging dummy in tutorial can now be caught with a net
- Thicker walls to give the Ghost more space to dodge fire extinguisher harass
- Ghost Tutorial now shows fire from molotov breaking tiles
- Timer turns red when the game reaches the final 10 seconds to grab the players' attention when the game is ending
- Renaming tutorial for more clarity
- Added text in Tutorial indicating that your party is waiting for others
What’s the Motivation?
For this iteration, the main focus of our development was in smoothing up gameplay and making sure players understand what they are supposed to do in the game. Teaching players the objective of the game was a constant struggle we faced since our first few iterations. We added a transition scene between the Login Screen and tutorial so players will have the objective of the game in mind when they progress through the tutorial and learn the controls. Furthermore, we doubled up the tutorial room for the pirates so that both pirates get a chance to use the tools and understand their usages.
We added in a soul tether indicating when the Ghost is extracting souls and replenishing the cannon. This gives the players a visual impact on their positioning and the clarifies the charging mechanics for the Ghosts' cannon. Similarly, we added a dizzy effect when the Ghost is hit by a hammer, which provides the right information for players to understand the hammer's effect. We also wanted to make the gameplay more balanced, so we decreased the cannon's charging rate. Adding in a limit to the fire extinguisher usage was meant to combat the constant spamming, which adds another constraint for the pirates. This would also require the players to think twice before using the fire extinguisher because it now has an cooldown every time the ammo is used up.
We also added some minor changes to make the gameplay feel smoother. In order to provide more protection from the fire extinguisher for the Ghost, an additional layer to the outer walls of the ship was added. During the final 10 seconds of the game, the timer text changes to red. We hope this change is able to attract the players' attention, so the game transitioning to the ending scene will not feel too sudden.
What's next?
Gameplay and major decisions for players are pretty much set in this iteration. For the next steps, we hope to add more professional polish to our game. We think adding a cutscene to replace current transition scenes between the Login Screen and Tutorial can provide more context and entertainment for players. We expect to release the final build next week.
