This week

The focus of this week has been predominantly on polishing features as we move towards the Beta release. Multiple play testing sessions were held to gather feedback on the project, with the main topics of interest focusing on the communication of the controls and UI, the confusion of the goal of the game, and the ability to reverse or “U-turn” the player car.

Dev

In response to the feedback received this week, the development team focused on fixing bugs that were discovered during the play testing sessions, such as the wave indicator appearing over the pause and game over menus when they’re triggered. Furthermore, fixes to the inventory system were applied where the player cannot pick up multiple inventory items, overwriting the last ones that were obtained.

In addition, to further help alleviate the confusion of redirects and clearly show where the redirects are/were placed, adjustments were made to the redirect process to outline the placed redirect arrows so they stand out to the player. In addition, when marking the intersection for the redirects to be placed, adjustments were made to highlight the intersection block to replace the overhead dot appearance and greatly increase the visibility and response to the player’s in-game actions.

Features

The following features were added to increase the gameplay loop variability and adjust the build to the feedback received:

• In order to address the great struggle players had with their understanding of the workings of the redirect placement system a tutorial system was implemented to carry the player through the redirect placement process. In order to ensure that the player has learned how to place a redirect before beginning the main level of the game, the tutorial won’t allow the player to proceed until a redirect is successfully placed. To start, the tutorial will describe the goal of the game and the narrative background or concept, then prompt the player to choose whether or not to attend the tutorial. In the tutorial, the redirect limit will be explained, as well as the beta test bar purpose and functionality, the enemy wave system, and the inventory system.
• Another high demand feature from the feedback was the ability to reverse the player car, or enable “U-turns”. Now, the gameplay will be less punishing where if the player misses a turn or makes a bad turn at an intersection, they can still have the ability to prevent losing the game instead of passively watching the player die.
• Another item power up was added to freeze time or slow down the enemy units

What's Next

We still have some temporary assets which we are hoping to replace in the coming weeks.

• For example several of the items are missing there icons in the current build of the game.