Devlog 5

Hello again from the Magengaard Team! In the past twelve days, we have been working tirelessly to put together our first functional build for the alpha, test it extensively through numerous playtests, and come up with a roadmap for our beta release. We have also been making extensive progress towards our second level, The Ruins.

Alpha Build

Previously, we had a mostly functional Desert Level already complete. Now it was time to give it a thorough polish for the alpha release. We started by adding the key tutorial features necessary to introduce the player to the game mechanics. In line with our goal to maximize immersion, we decided to embed the tutorial into the environment using three core systems, thus avoiding text explanations.

Sand Engravings

Introduce controls immersively by making them into sand drawings

Cave Paintings

Explain more complex concepts, such as this introduction to how to cast the first wind spell

Spell Pages

JJ finds a spell book at the beginning and collects pages throughout the game which explain and introduce new spells. These pages can be reviewed at any time via the spell book UI.

We also added rubble blocking the hidden passage which collapses one you pick up the book. This is done to make it clear to the player where to go next. Although the large door is their final goal, they must first travel through the desert level and acquire the spell needed to open it

In addition to gameplay features, we also spiced up the appearance of the Desert, adding in Unity’s baked lighting, and a new skybox from our art team.

Ruins Level

In parallel, we have been making extensive progress on the second level of our game. As per our story, the main character JJ is crossing the Ruins of the First Settlement on his way to the Academy.

While the Desert level represented the outskirts of the Settlement, the Ruins level is the inner settlement city (or what remains of it). The second level is almost four times as large as the desert, featuring eleven puzzles and combat encounters.

So far, we are just about half way finished, having added two new spells, a rough level model, four new enemies, and components for half of the encounters.

Playtest Feedback

Orthogonal to the Ruins level progress, we have collected data from over 20 playtesters (with more on the way), providing us with a number of consistent critiques that need addressing

• Spellbook UI: Most found the book UI to be unintuitive to navigate. We plan to rework the entire system from scratch
• Gesture System: Spellcasting is challenging, and upon failure, outright frustrating. We plan to modify the system such that spells are very easy to cast, but get stronger with improved drawing accuracy. This way, even in the failure case, players get the much-desired visual feedback of magic happening on screen
• Box Puzzle: Replacing the sliding box puzzle with a minecart puzzle as suggested by playtesters
• Numerous other fixes including the camera glitching into walls, player off screen, hopping functionality unintuitive, and cactus fight being too difficult

Current Plans

In the next ten days, our goal is to prepare a finished beta build. In that period, we intend to implement fixes for all of the consistent playtest critiques and finish the ruins level. While this is an ambitious goal, we aim to have majority of our functionality in place by beta so that the final weeks can be spent polishing what already exists.