Week 11 for a preparation week for us to send out our prototype to ETC alumni for playtesting. The ETC usually hosts a Playtesting Day where people of all ages and backgrounds come to the building to test our games. However, this event has been cancelled due to the Coronavirus pandemic. We pivoted this by now sending ETC alumni who previously signed up playable builds for them to playtest and give feedback on. With that being said, we wanted to focus on what we could add to our digital prototype to give these playtesters the best idea of what our concept is for combat.
With that being said, we decided on creating a skill for the Plague Doctor to execute now that our magic system was properly placed into the prototype. We believe that showcasing some of that magic that we took time to implement (and plague magic especially) will give playtesters a better idea of what the gameplay is heading towards for the final product. Our next sprint was decided to focus on adding a corpse explosion mechanic for the Plague Doctor. Dead units on the field that have the plague can be blown up with the Plague Doctor’s magic, causing damage and infecting plague on surrounding units.
We also created several design documents this week to pass onto the next team, such as UX and Dialogue. These are meant to be ideas we had, and why we came to them. They should be used as a base for the team next semester to work from so they do not have to start from the beginning.
Looking at the art side of things, we focused on the Gargoyle Unit for characters and materials for the environment in unity. Upon iterating on several different designs for the Gargoyle, we have discussed and focused on specific characteristics we want out of the unit. We want these units to be bulky and menacing, while still resembling a more animal-like silhouette. We will begin playing with color palettes to see which color scheme fits best with the gargoyles.
As for materials, we have created materials for the floor, walls, and altar. Like the design documents above, these are meant to be a baseline for the team next semester to build off of. We also placed the 2D characters within the environment to get a feel for what they look like in-game. This includes how the lighting and camera will look when presenting these characters.
Next week we will focus on feedback from the alumni playtesting to find out what would be best to showcase with the remaining time we have left before handing this off to the next team. We will also begin to finalize concept art, both with environments and characters. We will also make sure that we have properly documented all of our exploration, detailing why we made the decisions we did.