First Upload of the Game after several iterations and playtests with our game development class.
Please run the game with a 16:9 aspect ratio and make sure you have two controllers connected before booting the game up for the optimal experience.
After the most recent playtest it was clear that players still had no real understanding of the rock paper scissors aspect of the game, and were more confused than anything by the floating icons above each others' heads. So we made a fairly comprehensive tutorial to tackle that, telling the player what each button does through more interactive means. With a new place to put the controls, we did away with the old title screen to make it more visually appealing. Our other big priorities were to make the combat itself feel better. The animations were modified to feel weightier, making poke and especially swing have a longer overall animation curve with a windup followed by a quick “punchy” delivery of the attack. Swing was also made to take much more stamina to prevent people from spamming it quite as often. This mostly came as a result of us viewing both gameplay analytics and in person playtesters, wherein it is abundantly clear that players spend almost all of their stamina swinging wildly instead of playing tactfully.
Despite our work this week, we know we still have much to do. In the coming weeks, our top priority is making the combat fun and engaging, while leaning more into the strategic aspect of it, as it is the core of our game. Specifically, we have plans for more diverse attack animations created as a product of chaining inputs together, as well as taking a closer look at stun timings and specific interactions from the rock paper scissors mechanic to slow the game down while making each decision feel more important. Other than that, making the tutorial more engaging and informative is our next highest priority, amongst general polish of the arena, UI, more sounds, and much more juice throughout the game are our next highest priorities.
