• Register
Post news Report RSS P3_Alpha_Release

Alpha release: the first iteration of Pirate Fight! (name in progress)

Posted by on

What’s New and Why?

  • Reverted to the top-down version of our game.
    • Motivation: See the whole arena at once, and make inter-team interaction through shooting/bumping more relevant in the game.

  • Reverted to infinite cannonballs.
    • Motivation: Limiting cannonballs because forcing players to refill cannonballs was confusing, hard to explain, and limited player fun.

  • Centralized chest that opens and closes.
    • Centralized Chest Motivation: Forces more inter-team interaction by having only one deposit location for coins.
    • Open/Closing Motivation: Encourages more team interaction when chest is closed and discourages the only-collect-and-deposit strategy.

  • Revamped UI including a visual representation of each team's progress towards victory (rather than textual).
    • Motivation: Players won't (or can't?) read text.

  • Restructured Tutorial to be less textual and incorporate all gameplay elements.
    • Motivation: Text cluttered up the tutorial, and having just buttons is more intuitive.

  • Added Sound.
    • Motivation: It had been far too long. (Adds juice and general feedback)

  • Added ability to hold the row buttons to continue rowing.
    • Motivation: Discourages spamming the row buttons while keeping the heart of the mechanic alive.

  • Eliminated ability to switch stations.
    • Motivation: Switching stations is unnecessary and confusing for players, and didn't have interesting decisions involved.

  • Added destructible obstacles that spawn coins when hit (coin rocks and "piñata" raft).
    • Motivation: Having all the coins in the arena to start with felt arbitrary and too easy. This also encourages more cannon use, and through resource scarcity, encourages team combat.

  • Added the ability to shoot coins and made it the sole way for depositing coins.
    • Motivation: The ability for a team to immediately deposit all coins made the losing team's chances of winning very slim. Now, coins must be deposited incrementally, and this allows for fun moments like coin-interceptions and accidental coin-passes.

What's Next?

  • Adding more depth to shooting through charging up shots.
  • Revamping the art and colour schemes.
  • Coin scarcity managed "scientifically".
  • Player stats.
  • Ready-up/Team-select screen.
  • Experimentation with 4 boats.
  • Developing a marketing video
Post a comment

Your comment will be anonymous unless you join the community. Or sign in with your social account: