The team had two primary goals this week: to fix level 1 and to start levels 2 and 3. With the game as it is now, a major problem we've encountered time and time again was that it lacked enough gameplay to sustain it. The proper development of our game was not helped by the fact that our prototypes were often incomplete and still consisted of bugs. Therefore for this week, we really aimed to optimize our plans for the upcoming levels in a way that's feasible yet also still in-line with what we would want our game to have in the end. This is so that we may avoid having to present an incomplete game that ends up with us getting feedback that focused solely on what could've been and what should've been instead of what could be done next. With that, the bulk of our progress for the week involved addressing some coding issues with the level 1 we presented, ideating our puzzle, map, pacing, and narrative (+sub-narrative) plans for level 2, as well as really taking into consideration the feedback that we have received throughout the semester, both from our peers and the teaching staff. The team held a meeting where we really deliberated on the level design that the final upcoming levels should have in order to compensate for a lacking introductory level. The process included numerous sketches that illustrated potential puzzles and enemy encounters, which will eventually be translated into finalized assets. We also revisited the mechanics of our game, discussing which ones we think should be omitted from gameplay (due to lack of implementation time or inability to properly integrate) and which ones would instead help support the overall experience. In the next few days, we plan on really cracking down what we hope to achieve with these last 2 levels and begin preparing all the assets, files, and source material that we'd need to accomplish our goal of completing a cohesive and interesting game.
