Monday 24th Feb

Everybody seems is getting on with their tasks and we’re feeling prepared for the playtest on Thursday. Programming and artwork so far are keeping to task with little to no problems, all being uploaded to the correct areas and ready for implementation. We have even found room to start working on sound earlier than we had anticipated! Some mechanics/gameplay aspects are to be tweaked and the UI work is currently at a standstill, but this doesn’t so far appear to be putting stress on the other aspects of the game.

Joe and I (Anna) had a lengthy discussion about gameplay issues he found with the prototype, particularly with the management part of the game and how uneventful it is. It didn’t feel fun and was repititive. We debated and brainstormed different ways we could drive player motivation. Adding a risk factor seemed to be the best course of action to encourage players to strategically gather specific resources that otherwise felt useless to until later on in the demo (tech, bio). To do this we thought about introducing a “weekly requirements” list of materials thats players need to have gathered by the end of the game week. This would be separate from the current progression button that serves to drive the narrative.

Branching off from the weekly requirements we discussed NPC happiness/satisfaction and how gathering certain materials might lower or raise that aspect, this would also allow for replayability as players could restart the game to focus on a different NPC than they did last time. It was interesting but complex. We will come back to this after the playtest.

We knew that we had to stress the importance of food gathering for survival and so decided that we should implement a daily food reduction mechanic, enhancing the idea that the survivors are real people that need nourishment and are under the player’s leadership – their survival depends on you as the leader. This is what we are prioritising at the moment for the playtest.

This week’s tasks until playtest are as follow:

• Joe –  refining management gameplay
  • Implementing daily food reduction mechanic
  • Balance resource production of each day depending on surivor skill
  • Balance progression requirement based on resource production
• Rosie – continuation of background assets
  • Final survival camp background
  • Dialogue scene background
• Gabi – continuation of character assets
  • Finish Arnold character art
  • Begin concept art research on Ingrid
• Anna – research and assist teammates
  • Refine playtest structure
  • Help Joe refine mechanics and gameplay
    • Look at existing 2D resource management games (bonus points if they crossover with the story-based genre)
  • Assist Yiran with any of the dialogue writing as needed
• Yiran – dialogue and sound
  • Use feedback from meeting with Anna to redraft first scene
  • Continuation on survivor camp background music

(Dont forget to document work!!)

I’ll remind team members to keep on track of their own personal blog posts to ensure no one gets stressed out by the extra load of documentation, it’s better to do things as we go then leave it until last minute.