(What’s New?) A list of what has changed this week (tweaked mechanics, added content, etc).
- We have changed the beat patterns to be more exciting and match with the music.
- We are lucky enough to be working with a composer for our music, which should be coming in the next release!
- Enemies are now only seen after triggers are hit.
- Made tutorial more intuitive.
- Added streak to “beat score” indicator.
- Different beat patterns will now appear when the center and top of the streak bar are reached.
- Redesigned hiding rooms. A player can now hide in a curtained room and wait for an enemy to pass.
- Restore player health when they re-enter the safe room.
- Redesigned level layouts.
- Cutscenes now feature torches going out as enemy awakens.
- Added audio jump scares.
- Players now cannot leave a level until they have reached the trigger.
(What’s the Motivation?) A discussion / summary of why you made these changes. Where is your project headed?
A lot of the updates made this week were either feedback we received from play-testing, changes to layouts or bug-fixes. However, our ultimate goal is still to make the game feel more scary. Last week, the torches were added to make it harder to get lost in the hallways by adding landmarks, but they also add to the atmosphere of being in a scary place. Now, they go out when a player hits the trigger, making it more difficult to see.
Finally, we felt that adding more “juice” to the game would make the game feel generally better to play. Some of this includes adding changing some models/textures in certain areas (the doors), integrating the new music written by our composer, adding death juice, adding audio jump-scares, etc.
(What’s Next?) What changes you plan to make for the next iteration.
In future iterations, we hope to add more juice to really make the game as scary as possible. We see the game having more story and cutscenes to really immerse the player in this world, while allowing a good integration with the UI. In other words, we would like to make our graphics and UI come together smoothly. Finally, we are so excited to incorporate the music written by our composer next iteration!
