This week, we had a big Playtest day on Saturday. So we focused on preparing the playtest from Monday to Friday, especially focusing on presenting the whole game flow, improving user experience, and fixing bugs.
The things we’ve done this week:
Transition & ending video:
- Finished the final version of the transition
- Finished the ending video.
- Implemented them in our game.
User experience & Gameplay improvememnt
- Prevent players from getting lost: added the feathers & halos on mom eagle’s flying path as visual hints.
- Make the flying experience more fun: when people hit the feather, there will be a voice-over triggered.
Transition & Ending Video
To make our transition video more beautiful and effective, we added stones, and flowers, and polished the shots for the environment.
And the ending video is one of the most important elements in our game, we polished it a bit more, and added subtitles.
User experience & Gameplay
We were still facing the problem that players often got lost when they were trying to follow mom eagle.
Previously, we teleported people next to mom’s position when they were too far away from the mom eagle, and we made mom eagle honk to indicate that she is “calling you.” But, still, the problem was not solved completely.
The new solution now is to put the feathers and halos on the mom’s flying path, so that players can see lots of visual hints on their way to the desitination. We playtested this solution on Saturday, it turned out that it not only made players easy to follow, but also made the flying experience more interesting.
We also implemented this feather + halo hint in the “bad environment”, where there was not guidance previously.
The experience now is more consistent and clearer for players to navigate. And here’s our current demo video: