In this article, we discuss the alpha release of The Magic Way Home (working title).
Indiedb links: downloads
This week the development team analyzed the playtest feedback from the last iteration, and we also added some new features to the game. Other than minor bug fixes, some of the improvements we’ve made include adding more sound effects and refining the background parallax so that the clouds in the background are constantly moving, to give the game a lively feel. We also added level transition animation to make the game more professional. In addition, we added a health system and checkpoints in the level. To make the health system meaningful, we added spikes that will cause players to lose health if stepped on, and dropping in a pitfall will load the last checkpoint (if health is not zero) instead of always reloading the scene. Finally, we adjusted the tutorial a little bit to make it more fluent and less explicit.
Two major features that we implemented this week are the coin shop and the grappling ability of the wand(not in the build yet). In the coin shop the player can purchase heart(hp), and mana point limit. This way, the coin collection system becomes more meaningful than a side challenge. The grappling ability will allow the player to move in dimensions and traverse the level in a different way.
Because we feel the grappling feature is not polished yet, we decided not to put it in the game for this iteration. For the next iteration, we will polish the grappling feature and design a specific level (or section of a level) dedicated to the new traversal brought by the grappling ability. We are also going to extend current levels and add in more sections of the game. We are also looking forward to adding more music done by the freelancer.
