Playtesting, SFX Updates, and Icons

Very small and early update this week because I'll be on vacation starting tomorrow. I unexpectedly had a playtest this week from a friend who's been giving me feedback on my games since Frisbros.  Apparently he reads this devlog -_- which I had no idea anyone did and decided to try out the latest changes.  He came back to me with a lot of feedback and I had some interesting takeaway.  Overall the feedback was very positive, AND he got to try out all of the new Icon changes Ref completed last week.

Art

From an art perspective, Ref has just been going to town on all of the icons in the game.  It's funny because it feels like more and more just keep cropping up as we go and we had to take some time and plot out the coloring of them all.  As of yesterday all of the icons are finally done though and I just need to put them in the latest build.  Check out the idea we had to for color theory on them. Remember there's like 2 dozen of each one haha.

Player Stat Icons - These we went with simple black background for contrast, and since a lot of the stats represent elemental affinities we did: metallic and wood for attack speed/power, then red/green/blue/purple to represent the colors of elemental abilities you can unlock

Powerup icons - These are also simple black background with high contrast teals, whites, and a little reds.  I think the strict nature of the color makes it all of them pop rather well.  Ref also gave little accent colors for elemental abilities so they match the colors of the player stats that they buff

Boss chest icons - This is where it gets interesting.  To show that they are SUPER POWERFUL, ref added a red/black alpha blend to the background that makes them seem more dangerous than the standard powerups. I really like the outcome.

Upgrade Icons - These, along with other main menu icons will all be gold, to show that they cost money and are permanent upgrades to your character.  I think they all came out really good!

Difficulty modifier - This one snuck up on me because I completely forgot about them haha.  I suggested we keep it simple and make them roman numerals for all the difficulty settings.

Since ref has been on an absolute tear, I asked him to work on the weapons we will have in the game next. This is the fun part and I'm excited to see what crazy designs he comes up with.

Music

So this week has been interesting in the audio department.  Juan and I have been dipping our toes into test out the sounds.  We have a couple that I'm already very excited to have in the game (like the exp sound) and others that I think have been mixed results due to my bad referencing.  I'm still trying to figure out the best way to communicate exactly what I'm looking for since I'm so bad with sound and it's been a struggle, but I think we're establishing a pipeline.  I feel bad because I keep asking for revisions for the existing sounds, but I think once we nail down the feel of game, going forward we'll be churning them out.

One good think to come out of it though is that I've had some time to refactor my unity structure! which has been great for performance.  For those who don't know unity resource folder (which lets you load things from code) dumps everything into memory on start.  Going through my audio library, its been nice to pull out 100s of different MB sized files into a non-resource folder.

Game Design

And finally we come to the play test.  This has been very eye opening for me because I got to watch my friend play and give feedback.  A lot of it was good, some of it I'm still swallowing, especially when it comes to a certain powerup (Jittery/Stalwart) that I feel everyone hates haha. Leave Jittery alone! 

But in all seriousness I've gotten a lot of good takeaways and even some proposed solutions that I'll definitely be implementing.  My top ones are:

- Replay-ability and new difficulties: This was the best balancing feedback I got and I'm going to follow it verbatim.  Right now there's nothing incentivizing players to try new difficulties. There's also nothing barring players from putting all their money into Health upgrades (or whatever else they're interested in maxing out).  My friend proposed to introduce a new currency that only becomes available at higher difficulties.  This way you need to play those to get the higher tier upgrades.  BRILLIANT.

- Stalwart Jittery: It's not fun to stand still without the promise of a perminant benefit.  Instead of making it so you gain stacks and lose them at the same rate, I'll be promising a permanent powerup boost if you stand still for X seconds.  This way it never feels like you're losing progress! I think it's a great fix overall and I'm excited (because I hate jittery as well!)

- End-game unlock screen: He proposed a great little vfx effect which I think I'm just going to steal.  I don't want to spoil it here and I think it should have a juice punch and increase the snappiness of the end game music, stay tuned 

- Questing: he felt unincentivized to do all of the quests because the rewards for completing 1 part is pretty small.  I knew that there was a big payout for completing all 3, but he didn't. As such I'll add a UI element that shows you many you completed in the level so the player knows there's a limit and to suggest that doing them all has better rewards.

- Golden Tumbleweeds: As a last minute addition to level 2, I added tumbleweeds to sell the desert feel.  My friend suggested that every now and then one of them is gold! I had the idea that it also drops money as it tumbles so the player knows its something he can hit to collect loot.  I think this is a great idea, and I might do something like this for each level.  Like golden wells in level 1 that you can farm by drawing water from them.  idk!

Next week

Next week I'm diving back in when I return.  I think the focus of the week will be on VFX and getting all the powerups feeling nice and juicy! On top of that I want to experiment with some of the player feedback I got and see what impact it has one the game.  lastly, I want to spend some time head hunting for a Video Editor to make the trailer.  If anybody knows someone, let me know! (personally I have my sites set on whoever made the christmas trailer for Sulfur haha) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2124120/SULFUR/