Week 5 Devlog
Developing Game 2: Super Smash Slime
Refining the Game World
Before Wednesday’s advisor meeting, we continued refining the environment for our social slime platformer. We replaced the sky background with a scene that fits the cylindrical display more naturally. The platforms now use colors that belong in this new world, and we made the windows smaller after realizing that players might mistake them for interactive objects. These changes help the game feel more connected to the shape of the screen.
Wednesday’s Advisor Meeting
Tom and Derek played the latest version with us. Watching four people play revealed something exciting about the cylinder: players were walking around the display, calling out to one another, and reacting to where other people stood. At times, they even got in each other’s way while trying to follow the action. Our advisors felt there was more to discover in this platformer and encouraged us to keep developing it.
Their feedback gave us a clearer set of questions for the next iteration:
- Finding your character: When a match starts, a player may not know where their slime has appeared. From any one position, they can see only part of the cylinder, so their character could be somewhere out of view.
- Reading the game from anywhere: Important UI appears in too few places. It needs to repeat around the cylinder so players can understand the match wherever they stand. We also need to check character and platform visibility from different positions.
- Staying involved after dying: Players need a way to respawn and continue playing. A timed round with points for kills and points lost on death would give everyone a clear goal through the end of the match.
- Testing the full six-player experience: The game is designed for six players, so we need playtests with all six playing at once. Their feedback and our observations will show us whether everyone can follow the action, find their characters, and move comfortably around the cylinder.
The meeting also opened up ideas for mechanics that use the continuous display, such as an attack that travels around the cylinder or a character that disappears in one place and reappears elsewhere. We will use upcoming playtests to learn which interactions are worth exploring further.
Our Next Iteration Plan
Based on the meeting, our next iteration focuses less on adding an entirely new core mechanic and more on making the existing multiplayer experience understandable from the moment a player picks up a controller.
A Pre-Game Lobby for Player Orientation
Our biggest change will be adding a pre-game lobby before the match begins. Instead of immediately dropping every slime somewhere onto the cylinder, players will first join the game using their controllers. As each player joins, they will be assigned a slime color and a matching section of the 360° display. If only one player has joined, their color can occupy the entire cylinder; with two players, the display will divide into two 180° sections; and with more players, the screen will continue dividing so that every player temporarily has their own identifiable space. Inside their section, players will be able to see their slime clearly and practice the basic controls and abilities before entering the match. This allows us to solve several problems at once: players can immediately identify their character, understand which controller belongs to them, learn the controls before the match becomes chaotic, and use the cylinder itself as part of the onboarding process. Once everyone is ready, the individual sections will disappear and all players will enter the shared game together.
Matching Controllers to Slimes
We are also switching from Xbox controllers to PS5 controllers. The PS5 controller has a visible light that can display different colors, which gives us another way to connect the physical controller with the digital slime. For example, a player controlling a blue slime could also have a controller displaying blue light. Combined with the colored lobby sections, this creates a clearer connection between controller color, screen section, and slime color, which we hope will make identifying a character much more immediate, especially in a six-player game.
Expanding Items and Player Status
We are also expanding the item system so that a larger number of players have more opportunities to interact with the match. The next version will include a bamboo propeller for additional movement, a shield for temporary protection, a damage boost, health recovery, and an extra life. We are also making the life system much clearer. Each player will begin with three lives, and the UI will communicate remaining lives more explicitly than before. Because there may eventually be six players moving around the cylinder simultaneously, these items are intended to create more varied situations across different parts of the screen while giving players clearer information about their current status.
Improving the UI Around 360 Degrees
The next iteration will also include additional UI supporting the new mechanics. A traditional game can assume that every player is looking at roughly the same rectangular screen, but Super Smash Slime cannot. Players may be standing anywhere around the cylinder, so important information needs to remain understandable from different positions. We will continue experimenting with how information such as player status, remaining lives, and item effects should be repeated or distributed around the display without making the screen feel cluttered. This will be one of the main things we observe during the next round of playtests.
Sound and Music
We are also giving more attention to sound. The next version will introduce background music, while we continue balancing the volume of individual sound effects so that important actions remain noticeable without overwhelming the experience. Sound becomes especially interesting on a cylindrical installation because the game is not being experienced from one fixed listening position, and this is something we want to explore further as the physical setup develops.
Thinking Beyond the Screen
One of the broader questions coming out of this week is how much of the experience should exist outside the digital screen itself. Right now, the cylinder is sitting on a relatively simple white table. It works functionally, but it still feels like a screen placed on top of furniture rather than one complete entertainment installation. For a later iteration, we want to explore a physical build around the display, such as a table, cabinet, or supporting structure designed specifically for the experience. We want to consider its height and shape, how it visually connects with the cylinder, where controllers should be stored and returned, and how the structure might guide where players naturally stand or move. Speaker placement is another part of this question. Rather than treating the speakers as separate equipment placed nearby or on the floor, we want to investigate how they might be integrated into the installation so that the sound feels like it belongs to the game world. These ideas are slightly further ahead than our current software iteration, but they are becoming increasingly important as we think about the cylinder not simply as a screen, but as a complete multiplayer device.
Next Week
Next week, our main goal is to turn the ideas from this week’s advisor meeting into a testable build and use playtesting to see whether they actually improve the multiplayer experience.
- Monday — Build the next playable version: Finish the pre-game lobby, controller and slime color matching, expanded item system, clearer life and status UI, and improvements to music and sound.
- Tuesday and Wednesday — Run playtests: Test the updated version with multiple groups, especially with the full six-player configuration.
During the playtests, we will focus mainly on whether players can quickly identify their slime, understand the lobby and new mechanics, read important information from different positions around the cylinder, and stay oriented when all six players are active at the same time. We will also continue observing how players naturally move and communicate around the display, since those physical interactions are becoming an important part of the experience.