builds - Drive.google.com?
Some of the feedback we got was that the projectiles were visually hard to see and aim, so we made them larger and gave them a color that better contrasts with the dark background.
We also found some softlock bugs like doors not unlocking and fixed those. Some players were also frustrated by how much progress was lost every time they died, so we added some checkpoints. We wanted to make the game feel more complete, so we added a new level and a boss. Beating the boss results in completion of the narrative that we set forth in previous iterations. Now we hope that our game is content complete, and that we can focus on bug fixing and mechanic/level tweaking for these final weeks.
There were some bugs that were not game-breaking but made the game harder than we expected. For example, hedgehog enemies did not take damage from projectiles and could push you into the holes. We plan on fixing these bugs for beta as we ran out of time during this sprint. One more thing we want to improve is ability balance. It's not as satisfying to use the pushback and web ability compared to the other abilities, so we'll look to give these abilities more functionality within our level/boss. We also want to amp up the juice even more by adding suspenseful music and a story cutscene to the boss level to add to our narrative. Finally, we’re considering blacking out parts of the dungeon the player has yet to visit, lightening them as the player enters them, which would give our game a more authentic experience of exploring a dangerous cave. It would also help conceal hidden treasures that we want the player to discover by exploration rather than just being able to see them on the screen.
From our feedback this week, we primarily focused on refining all the content that we have implemented thus far. In addition to fixing some game breaking bugs (i.e. permanent slows, softlocks, boss colliders) and sound balancing, we attempted to balance our abilities by giving some of the more lacking ones (web and pushback) more juice (through animations) and utility (more damage/changing functionality) to make them more viable when compared to the shooting ability. Besides abilities, we also rethought our level design with regards to the tutorial and our second level. For the tutorial, we tried to remove as much text and pausing as possible when guiding the player for the first time. For the second level, we added a section that will hopefully require the player to think through more interesting decisions as opposed to the player being able to dash through the whole level. Narratively, we adjusted and added more fitting cutscenes to make our story more clear to the player. This included the boss level, where we added smoother transitions between cutscenes and epic boss music to improve the feel.
For the next iteration, we plan to juice out our game as much as possible through better aesthetics overall (i.e. updating doors/buttons/walls) - sound, visuals, feedback. We also plan to respond to the feedback we will receive from the next playtesting session.
Here is a link to our most recent builds (Mac + Windows): Drive.google.com
Because our feedback led us to believe that our game is near a fun stable state for showcase and also that this is the last week for iteration, we decided not to add anything too substantial content-wise and focused on adjusting our current components even further through bug-fixes and numbers tweakings. The bugs we found were not game-breaking but were unintended (i.e. being able to attack the boss before the boss introduces herself), so we went ahead and cleaned those up. The primary things that we tuned were the upgraded shot (the charge shot), the basic web ability and the porcupine enemy. Our feedback noted that the upgraded shoot ability and basic web ability were rather lackluster, so we decided to change the charge shot so that it does much more damage and explode; we changed the web ability to do more damage and drain enemies health over time when upgraded.
For future iterations, we will look to do more balancing if needed and look to implement more content in the form of more abilities, levels, and bosses!
Here is a link to our most recent builds (Mac + Windows): Drive.google.com