This week, our team focused on improving visual clarity, UI readability, and overall game polish based on last week’s playtest feedback. Players had trouble understanding the rules, noticing the cheering button, and seeing the environment clearly, so we began addressing these issues across the project.

We continued developing the onboarding storyboard and began preparing it to become an instructional video, which will help players understand the rules more easily. The UI has been updated to highlight the cheering button, and new indicators have been added above the cars to show lap completion. We also started adjusting the lighting to brighten the environment and make the race easier to follow.

On the environment and VFX side, we completed prefabs for the red and blue team audiences and added glowing effects to signal when the cheerleader is approaching. We replaced the large energy ball VFX with smaller glowing particles that the car now collects as players cheer, making the feedback more readable and visually consistent. Our team also worked on refining the audience models, enhancing asset layouts, and polishing the environment.

For gameplay and VFX, we improved how cheering affects the glow sticks and flame effects. Glow sticks now brighten as players tap, each one can spawn small energy particles, and the flame visuals have been updated to maintain uniform density. The next step is making these systems independent of player count.

We also implemented new background music and additional audio cues, which add more energy and atmosphere to the gameplay.

Next Steps

• Continue developing the rules video and finalize storyboard sketches
• Polish the environment and revise track and audience seats
• Refine cheering VFX and energy systems
• Adjust the layout of the assets
• Implement the third racing team into gameplay
• Build the final leaderboard ending scene