What we changed:
The first big change we made was for player readability. We changed from spheres with an aim icon under them into player models we made. We also added both death and revive animations for the players. We also worked on balancing the game. The shield was changed so that instead of health it dies after a period of time, making it effective against Mars. We also played with cooldown timers so that abilities don't feel quite as spammable. The bosses were balanced as well. Pluto was given more dangerous attacks and We also finally got around to properly adding iframes on respawn. Additionally, we improved the tutorial. We created an entire side mission for the tutorial, but then realized it made it too wordy and took away from the core gameplay. After that we streamlined the tutorial to have fewer prompts and take less time. Furthermore, we added a dynamic camera that resizes as players and the boss move, making the action feel Lastly, we fixed tons of bugs, including spawning with momentum, respawning with the speed power up, and much much much much more :)
Why we changed it:
Player readability and general confusion has been a constant problem for us. We hoped that the player models would make everything more clear as there would be variation in depth and color. People were also confused by there death and when they respawned. This is why we added death and respawn animations. A comment we received from the last playtesting was that our game felt static. We added a dynamic camera to try and combat this. We hope that by zooming in when players are close and giving a wider view when needed, the game will feel more impactful and engaging. The tutorial is still a work in progress. We feel our game is too technical to let players not pay attention to the controls. However we hope that by having fewer prompts, and only essential ones, that the tutorial feels more fast paced for intermediate players while still being accessible.
What's next:
With this being the first release with a dynamic camera, we will of course want to make improvements to it. We want to improve it's framing and how it shifts. We also want to add some dramatic cinematic cuts. This will make finally defeating Mars that much more satisfying. We also want to make our UI look better, and want to make our own sliders. We'd also like to add more sound effects and do things like add individual player's sounds and other sound effects on boss attacks, dashing, and more. Lastly balance is ever evolving, and we will attempt to do more fine tuning with balancing.
