Polish and Testing

Devlog Five: Polish and Testing

This week was spent polishing up my game, as well as conducting a testing session and gathering feedback. Most of the editing was around the enemy and level difficulty as well as a few UI and Canvas elements.

Enemy and Level Updates:

One of the main adjustments for this week was trying to buff the enemies, while still having all levels be achievable.  The Players total health was also dropped from ten to five, on all levels. 

Masters:

Masters received a slight buff to their speed while in pursuit of the players. This means that while the player can still outrun them, it is more important to avoid them, rather than just constantly run past really fast.

Apprentices:

The apprentices also received a buff, but it was slightly larger than the master's. So, while they still remain the easiest enemy, there is more of a challenge avoiding them. After the testing session this difficulty was adjusted again to be easier on the introductory levels to ease new players in more.

General Level:

Something that I was potentially thinking of changing, that I left in, was the amount of walking in each level, especially as you progress. The reason behind this is with enemies being more deadly, it is important for the player to have areas where they will be relatively safe to run to.

An element that was fixed this week, was the anchoring of the canvas/UI elements. Previously things like the player score and health would only appear on certain sized screens. This was fixed so that they appear in the correct positions no matter what screen you are playing on.

Testing Session Feedback:

This is a summary of some of the feedback given during the previous testing session.

"Help Screen" - Make the help screen more obvious that it also contains instructions for new players, rather than tips on how to beat the levels.

"First level difficulty" - Make at least the first level slightly easier to complete as an introduction.

"Player Hurt Feedback" - Give the player some feedback when the player takes damage.

"Shooting range feels too small" - When walking the shooting range feels like it drops significantly, find a nice middle ground that work for standing still and moving.

"Add markers to the Map" - Add some markers like furniture to give the player a better way to orientate themselves on the map.