Devlog 9

Beta Release

Last Wednesday, we had our beta release. During the playtesting session for the release, we got a lot of helpful feedback on how to improve our game, and have been discussing what to work on first to get the biggest improvement immediately.

Quality of Life Changes

During the beta release there were small issues players pointed out. Some changes that were made are:

• Preventing the player from sliding down stairs and off ledges.
• Tweaking the position of the UI to make sure it's not blocking the player's view.
  
• Displaying what objects will collapse if the player eats their current target.
  • Players were frustrated that the surrounding objects collapsed without them knowing. To fix this issue, a red highlight is used to show the player what will collapse.

Lighting Changes

Improving the lighting: we noticed that the level was a bit too dark in some areas far away from any light sources, making it hard for some players to see what they were doing. We have also had an issue with our lights being too bright directly beside the light source, making it appear white near our torches. To address this, we have started to tweak the lighting in the pipeline to bring the brightest and darkest colors to a more reasonable point.

Tutorial Updates

We have decided to rework our tutorial. We noticed players finding ways to solve problems without learning what we wanted to teach them, making it harder to pick up the game. We are simplifying the tutorial and putting more focus on certain elements to provide a better experience for new players.

Challenges and Obstacles

• This week was about polishing what was already there so there weren't many challenges with the implementation. There were challenges in deciding what to prioritise and what to ignore for now, as there were many options to polish the game.