Producer Devlog 5

Hello everyone! 

Welcome back to Sprint 5. I want to preface that I'm currently writing this in the middle of Sprint 6, and just wow! We have gotten so much done. It feels so good to be so close to the end of our timeline. We're really closing in and everything is coming together so nicely. I want to cover so much, but I have to release everything I want to say in parts. I won't take up all of your time! :)

First, let's briefly discuss scope and the future. We have a little under 2 sprints worth of work left. Which, is pretty good. We are on track to finishing early, as long as everyone is doing their part. This is great! It gives us even more room to crank out any bugs and really polish how the game feels. So far it's looking like the last two sprints are going to go by with a breeze. The workload is lighter than usual, and the tasks at hand aren't discouraging. We pretty much finished the majority of our last creations, and are moving into finishing left over set up. 

Next, let's discuss development. In this sprint we decided that we needed to better explain the goal to the player. We found that there was true overall enjoyment in the gameplay/movement itself. But, the player ultimately wasn't sure what the objective was. We figured the best way to go about this within our ability was to deploy our 2D Artist Angie, to essentially make a slideshow that tells the story to the player at the start of the game. I'd rather you play the game yourself and see the story unfold, but I will give a sneak peak at it. The story revolves around the player themselves, their dreams, and the antagonist. Here's a look at some of the art Angie has drawn so far:

So far the story has been turning out great. We're trying to keep it short enough so that the player feels informed and enticed to go explore in this dreamy world, while not getting bored or feeling rushed. We hope this sparks the want to go explore and get your memories back! & Hopefully the sound effects, and visual effects we have added help with that.

Along with the objective, our tutorial is lacking a little in how fun and understanding it is. We made a minimum viable product for it, as the goal was to quickly convey how to play the game to the player, and then get them into the actual gameplay, where fun will happen. Though, we then realized we still need to find a way to convey how all the different guns work to the player when they come across them in the overworld. The current tutorial, if we're going to make changes to it, we'd like to completely redo the platforming in it. But that would take a bit of time that we don't have just yet, so we've settled with making more 2D art, showcasing how the weapons work. Stay tuned as I'll show one of those in Sprint 6.

Finally, I really just want to say, I wish I could cover more, but the last things I have to cover are pretty much wrapping up the game. I can't spoil everything that is to come yet, but I truly am excited for everyone to be able to play it in the end. KickBack has turned into this fun platforming free exploration dreamy world, where your goal is to take your memories back from the evil dream wizard. 

See you in the next one,

Angeleen.