Yesterday I finished all of the programming for my game and today I finished the artwork. The info bar is now more readable and speech bubbles pop up to let each player know what’s going on. (This was a big issue for people who didn’t read the instructions and therefore didn’t know why they’re controls were “messed up”). Which reminds me, I changed the instruction screen so it is prettier and easier to read. I should also mention that I cut out 3 and 4 player mode. I haven’t been able to test these on a regular basis, and those modes just felt clunky and unnecessary, especially given the looming deadline. Maybe I’ll add extra players for the next version, somewhere down the line.
Another highlight from today is that I conducted a small playtest with a friend and fellow design student. I wanted to make sure the almost-final version was as good as it could be before the crit. I got some useful feedback. Here’s some key points:
-negative scores: not so much fun
-huge speech bubbles can impair vision, transparent ones might be cool
-everything, not just player scores should be reset between rounds (lily pads of particular color and +/- functionality
- +/- switch should take place immediately, not after the next jump (just a technical bug)
- faster frogs = more fun
So, that’s what I’ll be working on between now and our last class. Woohoo.
I’ll leave you with a quote from today’s playtest:
Eric: “If it’s not too hard, you could make the frogs faster. That would make the game more fun.”
Me: “Yea, I’d really like to do that, but the way I calculate other stuff makes that difficult. I’ll definitely work on it some more though because I totally agree.”
Jen: “You could make it ‘Turbo Frogs.’ It’s like regular frogs but faster!”
Eric: “Turbo Frogs, sponsored by Red Bull…”
Jen: “Turbo Frogs is crystal meth. It’s like crystal meth on a screen.”
Me: “You’ll have so many lily pads…FOUR HUNDRED LILY PADS!”
Okay, so it was funny at the time. We’re nerds. See you all in class 