Hi folks, nothing big or special to cover this week, so I’m going to do some looking forward instead for what is coming up over the next few weeks for Level Squared.
We’re basically at the point now that our mechanics are all bedded down and done. Our level structure is set up and ready to go. All-in-all, the game probably isn’t going to change a whole lot from here on out, in structural terms at least.
What I’m really saying here is – all the easy work is done.
Now we need to do all of the little tiny quality of life improvements that you probably won’t notice if they work properly, but you’ll sure as heck notice if they are bad.
Things like our tutorial. At the moment our tutorial has been pretty heavily text-based, with words on the screen explaining to the player how to project and which buttons to press. But something we have found (and which everyone probably already knows) is that players don’t read the text. Players much prefer to learn by doing. So we are re-working our tutorial to lead the player to press buttons and find out what they do, rather than us telling them what they do.
This is our current text-based turorial
What we do know from our testing so far is that once players grasp the projection mechanic they are comfortable using it, but there is a period at the beginning of the game that is difficult while they learn what to do. So our aim is to teach the player as painlessly as possible, so they can get on with the fun later levels.
In a somewhat related matter, we have in-game text sprinkled throughout our levels. There isn’t any overarching theme to this text at the moment. And while it adds a nice atmosphere to the game, it doesn’t convey anything specific to the player. We want to use this element to add something special to the game, whether that is telling the story of the player, or the world that they are in, or even setting a specific theme for each level. It’s something that we are not taking full advantage of at the moment.
And finally, we want to add as much juice and flash to the game as we can. In the last week we have implemented animations on our player character for jumping and landing. This is very simple stretch and squish manipulation, but it adds a lot to the feel of playing and makes the jumping and landing feel more real as you play. Here’s an example:
New jumping animations in action!
So that’s what’s on the plate for the next few weeks!
But before that – we have another, last minute, surprise appearance at Bar SK tomorrow night (Wednesday 20 September) For Work in Progress Wednesday!
So if you missed out last time, or even if you played last time and want to again, come and hit us up at Bar SK!
