What's New:
This week we made a completely new tutorial. This tutorial has much more obvious directions, and makes sure to teach all of the core mechanics. The tutorial is also a mini boss fight, and was designed to give a better feel for the real game play. We also improved the player experience. We set up a new input system so that controllers don't have to be plugged in after the game loads. Additionally, we added some slight auto aim to make aiming feel better. Furthermore, we color coded bullets to match the color of the player. Lastly, we made visual improvements to the bosses. Mar's legs now all have health bars so you know they're supposed to be attacked. Additionally, all boss parts now flash when hit, making it more satisfying and clear when the boss is taking damage.
Why:
The bulk of our constructive/critical feedback has been about the player experience. It included things like the controls are hard to understand and not communicated well, aiming and moving the player feels bad, and that the game has a lot going on and is confusing. This week we focused on fixing that. The tutorial was completely redesigned to make sure players know what they're doing. Additionally, we tried to improve the feel of the controls and make them more satisfying. Lastly, the bosses were hard to hit, hard to know if they're being hit, and especially Mars was confusing. This is why we added health bars and made the bosses flash.
What's Next:
Because the tutorial was made essentially from scratch, a large part will be gathering feedback from play testing on the tutorial and seeing if this one was closer to the mark. We will for sure iterate on the tutorial in the coming weeks. We'd also like to improve boss animations and attacks, so they're more intimidating and satisfying to fight. We would also like to give the best feel for players, and will be paying close attention to how play testers feel controlling the players, and will use that to improve on the controls.
