Our sleeves are rolled up, there’s sweat on our brow, and our hands are dirty: this was a very productive week for team Serenity. We’ve researched music styles, storyboarded our game’s flow, and implemented new features.
The research on music styles centered on how music affects human emotions. It is our intention to apply this to our game so that as the player falls through the forest, not only will they feel an emotional shift in the color scheme but also in the musical score. Sound is an important factor in games in terms of establishing tone and we want to make sure we use it effectively to set the appropriate mood according to area the player is currently in.
We’ve also definitively decided on key moments that the player will experience during their journey. Using these key moments, we created a storyboard as a reference for the team and advisors. We will also use the storyboard as a tool to get feedback on our game’s flow from people outside of the team to see if it makes sense to naive users.
On the development front, some new features that we implemented this week include: a basic enemy, a user interface, a shield power-up, and a state machine for character animations. The enemy executes a basic charge attack, and if the player is hit their outer shell is damaged. The user interface that was added consists of a pause button that is shown during gameplay and, once pressed, displays a main menu that enables the player to: resume, exit, mute sound, and reload the game. The shield-power up is an object the player can collect that makes them immune to attacks. The animation state machine that was implemented supports the idle and jumping animations for the player character. With the addition of these new features, we are submitting our game for approval to the App Store. The process will take roughly two weeks. If everything goes smoothly, we should have a preliminary version of our game on the App Store by Halves.
Next week marks the end of our current sprint. Our goal is to get as much done as possible by then since the following two weeks will be consumed by Spring Break and GDC. Our deadline for the current sprint is Wednesday evening since we will be hosting guests on Thursday and hope to showcase our most recent build. Stay Tuned!