Week 8, Beta rush

Hello again!

We been working towards the Beta testing comming up this week.
Our goal was to polish the environment and tweak the lighting  to give the player visual cues to solving different puzzles in the game.

Due to the amount of content that we had to cut, we needed to rethink our design of the game and therefor extend the amount of gameplay to the content we had available.The cut content have really changed the design of the game in terms of aesthetics.
From being straight forward gameplay where taking your opportunity is key,  while also being able to utilize your powers to sprint through the main puzzle in somewhat of a platformer style of gameplay at the cost of player health, creating a feeling of being vulnerable and there always being a threat.
Into a game where you wandring around , backtracking and taking your time to figure out the puzzles layed down infront of you with the help of shifting to a different version of the world  to solve the puzzles, creating a sense of mystery around itself.

The player now moves around in just one room. Connecting rooms do exist but are of very limited use and size while being connected to the main rooms puzzle.
This creates some backtracking for the player, which we originaly did not have, or atleast to a very limited extent.
When designing a puzzle that revolve around backtracking it is important to show the player where they are suppose to go and what is helpful and what is unfriendly.

The majority of the time has therefor been spent on remaking textures for a lot of props to use with blending masks and a master material for unreal that our Lead Artist made. This makes it a lot easier to work with the emissive color (that symbolize light) by handling it directly in the engine and make us able to change to color and intensity for desired effect.

We went with a simple color coding:

Red = Bad and unfriendly
Examples: Locked doors and Lasers

Green= Friendly and helpful
Examples: Open doors and health

Blue= Neutral and helpful
Examples: Heads-up lights and signs

Purple: Strong color for power
Examples: Your own power and it´s alike

Yellow= Danger ahead
Examples: Warning signs and ready lights , Something starting up or that might be of danger

We will contine to work on the game trying to guide the player as much as possible without spoiling the puzzles for them. Hopefully we can generate some great feedback from the beta!

Until next time!

//Oskar

About Oskar Kervefors

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