Over the past week or two, we’ve been able to get a good amount of playtesting in. Due to some of our group members being in the actual Playtesting class, this process was made a bit easier.
We’ve done a few iterations on how to approach the horizontal rotation and aiming for the fishing cast, and we’ve come down to either manual rotation (left and right using A and D, respectively) or an auto rotation where the game stays true to the original two-button requirement. This was one of the major things we playtested for. We’ve had almost all of our playtesters try both modes, and have gotten mixed feedback. In most cases, we started the players out using the auto-rotate, and they wondered what it would be like to play manually. The interesting thing is that one would think that manual would actually make the game easier, but this wasn’t always the case. We found that players actually took more time to figure out their aim and ended up wasting time when playing manually. Because of this, we are more than likely going to stick to the auto-rotate.
We also got some feedback that it is pretty difficult to tell what each soul in the pool does. To fix this, we’re going to add some sort of asset to the souls to make it more obvious what you’re reeling in. We also briefly discussed having some other kind of visual feedback when a special soul is reeled in.
Last week, we added in a few more souls to the pool - one being a penalty soul which cuts 10 seconds out of your limit; the other being one that adds 10 seconds. This added some flavor to the game, but also a few issues. Some of the testers casted out into a group of penalty souls, and instantly lost because of it. Others were able to make the game last in the upwards of 10 minutes by collecting a ton of bonus time souls. The best way to fix this would be by strictly tuning down the effects of both souls, as they were initially both set at 10 seconds for testing purposes when we first implemented them.
We got mixed, but mainly positive, reviews about the aesthetic of the game. Most people loved the overall look of the game, but a few people thought that it was a bit dark, and that the light contrast in the water made the Reaper easily forgettable.
To sum things up, this is a list of changes and tuning fixes we are going to work on:
-Stick to auto-rotate, or make manual a setting in-game
-Create some sort of assets to make the effects of the souls distinguishable
-Tune and refine penalty souls
-Sharpen up pathing on the souls
-Work on light and color contrast
-Refine the border mesh around the pool
-Smooth out the reeling mechanic, as sometimes the scythe will get stuck in the mesh
-Tone down or refine spawning habits of certain souls, so that insta-Game Over doesn’t
happen when reeling in a red pool
-Change a few UI elements and remove the old Strength/Horizontal variable counter
from the screen
-Fix collision on souls so they don’t leave the map (ties into refining the mesh)
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