Self-Love: The Thrivening Windows, Mac game

Hello everyone!!

Are you ready? It's our last dev diary of the semester - yes, we will miss you too!!

WHAT'S NEW?

• The social map is now split screen as well - you can put those magnifying glasses away.
• You may know Kevin as one of our developers. You can now know him as one of our players. And if you'd like, you can play as him or his purple heart!!
• Status effects like being stunned and knocked back now have visuals.
• We've added a brief moment of invincibility so you don't get hit by two cars in a row. Unless you really try.
• After much playtesting, we've fiddled with the balance so we've got for you a slightly longer, reasonably frenetic game!!
• The tutorial is skippable. You're welcome.
• Boxes are bigger and more obviously investigatable!
• Winning or losing is now not only clearer, but JUICIER than ever!!! You'll be seeing a fun team-specific victory or tragedy sprite, as well as reviewing your performance with a detailed results screen.

...WHY?

Re:Split social screen: When players got too far apart, the map simply got too zoomed out. It was hard to see anything happening. We wanted to encourage dashing into each other by having them on a single screen, but it wasn't a worthwhile trade.

Re:Kevin: Rarely does anyone want to play as a recolor of player A.

Re:Boxes: Playtesters were mentioning that they didn't realize boxes were where the items were. So we made 'em sparkle.

Re:Results: Confusion about who won is way too anticlimactic in a competitive game!! So not only do we make it super clear who won, we provide stats about HOW much you won!! For extra victory oomph.

COMING UP!

• GRADUATION!!! Big thank you to the staff of EECS 494!!! It's been a wild, wild ride!!

It's 4/22. You know what that means.