Critical Play and Development Blog n°3 / April 2021
Development Updates:
game over screen prevented the central message from showing
in browser framing failing, text incomplete
Game slots (activities) no longer spin infinitely after rotating them on a collider, this caused the game to crash in browser.
Added a ‘typewriter’ effect, courtesy of “CodeMonkey”, on the central text, giving more dynamism and movement to the text. This displays each character progressively, which is more pleasing to the eye. (Link to his tutorial: https://youtu.be/ZVh4nH8Mayg).
Added flavour text for every time the player drops an activity into the cup, increasing per amount of activity. For instance, when the player drops 10 ‘wellbeing’ activities, the text displays: “Achievement Unlocked: Do Nothing.”
Added flavour text for every time the play restarts a day, changing depending on a random index. These lines display both basic dialogue, but also game tips. (Always useful if the player cannot see the controls prompt at a first glance).
Refurbished the colour palette, choosing something more muted. The reason why is because it brings out the activities to the player’s eye, and gives a calmer sensation, in my opinion, than harsher reds and bright blues. Teal and brick red also give a crayon looking aspect.
Opted for minimalism when it came to the UI, and text display, rather than something flashy or wild; both because of time constraints and because of the overall feel of the game.
Other than that, I mostly followed and addressed the troubles that my play testers had with the game. These included:
Download version did not work for some, had to upload to browser instead.
Text glitched out whenever typing out one flavour text line and being told to type another.
More thematic mechanics, rather than have a bar that filled up behind the central text, the cup filled itself with each activity slotted, forcing the player to think about which activity used without overflowing the cup. If 10 activities were placed, but the player had not met their needs, then they lost the game and could try another day.
The game over screen was far too intrusive, and so I set the central display text to nothing whilst the game is over.
