Alas, week 11, you’re gone already and we hardly knew ye. With only a few weeks left in the semester, the team has been buckling down to incorporate the feedback we received from last week’s presentations and playtesting, as well as to finish implementing the remaining animal scenarios in the story.
First, we completely overhauled the game map. There is a more cohesive design to the forest now that will be much easier to navigate. The river is now both central to the story and to the forest itself; it literally bisects the map. As the player progresses through the game, the animal characters will be seen building the dam, as a reminder that the player’s actions are having an impact on the world.
In an effort to address concerns that players might be skipping past the dialogue, we’re trying out a system that makes the key information bold so that it’s less likely to be ignored/forgotten.
Responding to feedback from our playtesters that the fox’s movement and camera controls were not as intuitive as we assumed they’d be, we’ve moved away from mouse control and adopted a control scheme that relies on using the keyboard alone—something we observed our testers attempting to do on their own. This should make it much easier for them to progress through the game.
And above is an example of one of the new scenarios being implemented—the famous stag/deer/fawn storyline that’s been alluded to frequently in these blog posts. As you can see, the fox can choose between conversation options as it interacts with the fawn, with varying success depending on the choices made.
We have one major scenario that still needs to be implemented, and, of course, the moose if we still have time. Full steam ahead!
