Overview

Week 9 was mainly about running more playtests and using them to better understand what was currently working and what was not. This week gave us a clearer picture of the build’s strengths and weaknesses, especially around stealth, navigation, mist balance, and enemy readability. It also helped us prepare for the much bigger and more important playtesting effort happening next week on Playtest Day.

Weekly Focus

• Run more playtests to understand what was working and what was not
• Use the feedback to identify urgent issues
• Prepare content and priorities for Playtest Day

Progress Update

Tech

• Fixed transparency on shrine particles
• Added distance fog
• Added new enemy patrol edit system
• Fixed the player falling through the map at the start
• Revised the sprint system
• Changed checkpoints from walk-in activation to pray-to-activate
• Changed mist casting to be continuous casting
• Prevented enemies from entering shrine areas

Art

• Continued building more environment props and set-dressing assets
• Continued working on enemy silhouettes
• Added basic enemy model

Sound

• Added and polished more adaptive audio
• Added enemy footsteps, attacks, detection, mist-cast, pray, death, and respawn sounds
• Made sound react to mist through filters and guard-shout range changes

Design & Production

• Planned two playtests for the week
• Collected lots of feedback through both survey questions and direct observation
• Confirmed that the current build still felt too easy and not stealthy enough
• Found that navigation and goal clarity were still major issues
• Used the week’s feedback to better shape how we wanted to run Playtest Day next week
• Iterate on the map layout of section 1-1 based on the feedback
• Run a paper prototype simulation on the map iteration

Notes

This week was a very useful iteration week since it gave us a more honest look at the current state of the game. The playtests made it clear that the project still had strong ideas, but the actual experience was not yet landing in the way we wanted. In particular, the feedback helped us better understand that our most urgent needs were improving stealth tension, clarifying player goals and navigation, and rebalancing how powerful the mist felt.

Next

• Prepare the content and setup for Playtest Day
• Use the feedback to refine what questions we most want answered next week
• Continue improving stealth tension, navigation clarity, and mist balance

Media