We're back! This week, we focussed mainly on improving the polish and professionalism of our game for the beta release.
There were many tweaks to our UI and sprites, including:
- Making our cooking stations consistently outlined and easier to spot
- Creating custom customer sprites that match the pixel style of the playable characters
- Including an all-new master chef cat guide with animations (bye-bye avocado guide)
- Re-ordering draggable to always appear in front of other UI elements
- Creating an improved, themed end-of-stage screen
- Implementing a custom cat-paw cursor
And much more!
We made strides in our presentation by including an introductory cutscene to set up the narrative and custom scene transitions between each stage. Our aim was to make the game feel more responsive and refined.
We also made tweaks to the gameplay to improve the feel of progression and the likelihood of "a-ha" moments. Namely, we now allow players to continue in each stage as long as they want even when the customer leaves. This gives players time to plan out how they want to approach the stage on the next run-through and try out new paths. We also made each level locked, so players must complete previous levels within the allotted time to progress and unlock more exciting content. The game now starts directly in Level 1 (after the intro cutscene) to feel more like a story than a haphazard collection of stages.
In the final week, we hope to continue to improve upon our style and theme. Most importantly, we think it's time for new backgrounds that change between levels to lean into the feeling of progression. We also plan to add another cutscene or two.
See you next week!
~ Spelling Bee Studios (a group of University of Michigan EECS 494 Students)
Beta Build Link (Windows & Mac): Drive.google.com
