Dev Diary #10 - Environment Teaser, Undead Voices & Closed Pre Alpha Round 2 news

Closed Pre-Alpha Testing

The Closed Pre-Alpha has been running for some time now and we have been busy balancing gameplay, implementing changes and fixing bugs.

It's simply amazing what we have been able to learn from the anonymous game analytics and the feedback from interviews, emails, direct messages, forum, etc.

Knowing where players get stuck, confused or die too often gives us valuable information on how to balance the games difficulty, design clearer tutorials, place needed resources and generally make a more enjoyable game.

Here are a few good of examples:

• In the mayhem of combat players were having difficulty determining if their melee blows were finding their mark. So we have designed screen shake for a successful hit and added MISS (whoosh) sound effect for unsuccessful hits.
• Some players were reaching the magic barriers with plenty of souls, but did not have a sorcerer in their horde. So we added a corpse nearby to enable the player to reanimate a sorcerer and dispell the magic barrier.
• Most players were getting killed at the second combat encounter early in the game. So we changed the enemy types to be less challenging until further on on the game.
• Most players either did not know or forgot they could summon an Abomination when their Blood Meter was full. So we designed some pulsing UI and audio queues to remind you.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to organise your thoughts and write to us.

Environment

Scott has been creating and polishing map locations that allow the player to explore and allow us to demonstrate core game mechanics. The environment is still mainly snowy terrain until we get clear of the Closed Pre-Alpha, but then we can get down to business and creating more varied environments.

Here is a taste of what is already in the Closed Pre-Alpha.

Voices

Scott has also added some new and unique voice clips to bring your minions to unlife. This is a small feature that goes a long way toward creating the right feel for Lord Of Decay.

We have also enabled the passive human NPCs to scream in fear as they flee blindly from you and your horde. We have even added satisfying screams as they die an agonising death.

New Website

I finally made time to give the website a makeover and update the content to better represent the current state of the game.

It's still a work in progress so there are more than a few rough edges. Watch this space for more information about the Story of Lord Of Decay.

Closed Pre-Alpha - Round 2

Our systems are now in place and we have solved most of the teething issues. Doing future builds should be a lot easier going forward.

This means we're able to open the Closed Pre-Alpha up to more testers.

To get involved in Round 2 simply Share the bookmarked post on Facebook or Retweet the bookmarked tweet on Twitter. Do this before Sunday 28 Feb and you're in. That's it. That simple.

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You can get involved in the discussion on the Forum.

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Thanks for the support
Damian
Sandbox D7 Team