This week started by getting a build ready to playtest and to gather some feedback. For our build, we were mainly focused on two things -- how movement felt to the player, both in relation to the level design and intuitively, and how combat felt against basic enemies. We did not have enough of the map designed to properly test how the core gameplay loop felt, though we did include a very basic upgrade loop.
Amongst ourselves, we conducted four tests with four different people. In general, the feedback we received was largely positive regarding the movement. The main critiques received were that some of the control choices were odd, the dash movement felt too powerful, that certain abilities felt useless, and that the character moved too freely for what the level design allowed for.
For combat, it was pretty much universally frustrating. People thought it was too slow and restrictive, and had little impact, citing that the player not being able to move while attacking made it harder to hit enemies, especially after they were knocked back. The hitboxes were also deemed too small, with some finding it hard to hit even stationary enemies. The attack animations were also deemed too slow. All in all, we had to remake the combat.
After the playtesting sessions, we got to work on changing the aspects of the game that got the most feedback on. Combat was reworked almost immediately, with new animations created to give the player larger hitboxes. They were then reimplemented and given faster sample rates, and we let players move while they were attacking. As far as internal testing went, this made the combat flow a lot smoother than before.
Alongside the combat changes, we tweaked the values for the dash and the spin attack abilities, with the dash propelling the player a shorter distance than before, and the spin attack propelling the player much further than before, making it a more viable option for movement.
As the map felt too small for what the movement allowed for some players, we also started reworking the entire level design. In general, we wanted to focus more on the feeling of going up, so we made the rooms a bit wider, while making them a lot taller. This allowed for more variation of level geometry and also helped emphasize the feeling that the tower is very tall.
We figured that the reason the levels felt so small before was that they were drawn on paper before being tested in-game, and the initial modules were not drawn on a grid, which made it difficult to translate. Going forward, for the remaining areas of the game, the level design will be done directly in Unity.
For new content, more enemy sprites were created to get a sense of how they would look in the world.
Additions to the tileset were created, with some changes to help with some of the hitbox issues we found in in the playtesting sessions, particularly with the spikes.
Finally, we started work on the boss, implementing a basic sprite to get an idea of its size, as well as setting up the states for its state machine, which doesn't have any logic yet.
The goal going forward is to get the final first area finished, with the first three enemies implemented and placed around the area, so we can properly test the gameplay loop and combat within the context of the first area for the second prototype. To better test combat flow, we also want to get the boss finished, as it will be an extended sequence to better test combat flow, though this will be without art.
Until next time.
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