With my "producer hat" on, I spent much of the past week helping the team determine what the most important changes and additions to our IGF build are. What are the glaring bugs or issues that arise when playing? What is missing that would make the game more understandable? What will "sell" the game more effectively?
We got a fair bit of feedback from Roger about what is necessary to get the player up to speed more quickly, and Craig offered several suggestions that would help tie all of our art assets together in a pleasing way. We've taken these suggestions and added them to our polish backlog, so their comments have been noted and set in our plan of action.
With my "designer hat" on, I've been reviewing the balance of trap costs and effects. The number of times it takes for Dodos to learn to avoid certain traps was high on the list of necessary adjustments, so that has taken a good chunk of time to test and tweak. Further, I was involved in the processes of optimizing our camera controls, shadow implementation, and other in-game messaging strategies. Finally, I also helped the engineers determine the best way to make chaining Dodos from trap to trap work exactly as the player expects when they initially place those traps around the levels.
While we are quite happy with the product we submitted to IGF, we are well aware of the improvements that we need to make, and we're pushing to get a lot of them done before the game is actually reviewed by the IGF judges.
Still plenty to keep me (and the rest of the team) busy. :)
- Troy
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