The week before our soft open is always a bit of crunch time. It has been particularly challenging to evaluate what kind of progress we can expect week to week as we are encountering more and more bugs. We have quite a few moving parts and so every time we integrate something new in one piece of the project, it seems to trickle down into another portion of the project.
This week we made progress with the tutorial. When we updated how it was introduced to the players. We made sure to begin the experience with a blank slate. Before we had included a character to guide you through the game but this seemed to confuse players. Instead we begin the game by presenting the player with gestures to mirror. They then create the first character, which makes it clear that that is their job in the experience.
Another major success was the addition of two new character interactions. Since the beginning of the project we have wanted to be able to stretch our characters. This feels really important to the core of what “slime” is. When players try push two characters together they should receive some clear feedback as well. We have been trying to tune these parts of experience. While we do have some functionality in place, we have quite a bit to polish.
As mentioned in last week’s post, it has been challenging to integrate the concept of molding into our game play. This week tested out trying to introduce the the liquid slime as messy and easily scattered as you mold the slime is should become more compact and more like the small round characters. We are also working on transitioning the slime from one state to another.
Them being was another addition this week. Our initial island didn’t feel that exciting. It was just green. Instead some changes were made so that it could be beach themed for summer. This was a nice touch and definitely made the world feel more fun.
A big part of this week however is just polish and bug fixing. Our functionality is mostly there, but right now things feel chunky. Slimes die for unknown reasons. Leap motion misinterprets gestures or feels unresponsive. The slime liquid doesn’t transition from one state to another. The sounds get cut off midway through playing a clip.
These are the pieces that need a lot of change. We began working on them and they continue to take most of our effort as we approach softs.