Final Update for the Beta!

Hiiii!!!!

So, we have concluded the development for the Beta version of the game, and even though we know there is much to improve and much work ahead of us to make this game what we envisioned from the start, we are still really proud of the results we have as of now.

There is a lot that we have added, and we have had the last two playtestings for this part of the project, so we have a lot to talk about this time.

New Additions:

• We are starting with the textures! We added all of the textures for the map and its objects, as well as the toon shader we intended to add to everything in the map. We did our best to make the environment as similar to the characters as possible, to ensure that the characters didn't look out of place. We wanted to make the textures as similar as the art of the screens too, so we used the same color palettes as well, though we believe that the difference in time from when we made the art for the screen and the textures for the game affected the continuity of the art style a little bit. We believe we can resolve the issue later in the development of the game, as we intend to take some time to perfect everything we already have.

• We were able to add the animations of the characters successfully after struggling for an unnecessary amount of time with the rigging and exporting of the animations, but in the end, they do work. The ones that work to perfection are the player animations, but we did have a few issues with the animation for the enemy. It kind of clips and doesn't loop correctly; also, its animations cause the enemy to have issues with the colliders of the objects in the game and walls. This not only makes it fall through the floor but also allows it to walk in reverse and be able to kill the player through the walls. We hope to be able to fix these problems in the near future as we take time to do so.

• We wanted a way to make some of the player deaths easier to understand, as some of them were not clear to the testers. So, we thought of creating little animations for when the player dies. We aimed to make animations for different hazards, creating a variety so that the player would not experience the same one all the time. However, this goal was too ambitious for our team and the given time frame. Nevertheless, we did manage to create one very simple animation for the death caused by the enemy. This animation triggers if the enemy touches the player. While we initially believed this would be a great addition to the game, in the end, we realized that a skip button would have been ideal.

• We made a few changes to the screens, updated the controls, modified the name on the main menu, and added a brief explanation of the game's objective

Things to improve: 

As we intend to keep working on this game, and since it is the first big project we are tackling, we are aware that the game is far from perfect. Nevertheless, we still want to keep learning from it. We believe the game has a lot of potential, and we intend to take a little bit of time to polish what we have of the game right now so we can keep adding to it later.

There are a few issues we will need to address as soon as we start the fixing phase, but we are still really happy to be learning from them:

• First of all, the movement of the camera; we tried as much as we could and knew, but the movement of the camera was just messed up constantly, having the camera go out of the map, clipping onto objects, and just moving very fast. We believe we kind of fixed the problem of it moving very fast, but we might need to remake it from scratch.

• Something we should be adding is more ways for the players to understand the deaths of the hamster. We wanted to make the deaths a big part of the game, so by adding more visual clues to what might be dangerous and adding more of the death cutscenes, we believe the experience would be highly improved.

There might be more issues with the way the game works, but these are the bigger ones our testers mentioned and the most immediate ones we would like to improve.

Conclusions on the Beta: 

We are new to this environment, and we still have a long way to go, but despite this, we are proud of the work we have done. As a team of two within a year's timeframe, given to us to make as much as we could, we believe we did an amazing job.

We have seen a huge improvement in our skills since we started making this game, and we know we can make it shine even more with a little more time to work.

This game has received all kinds of comments and opinions from our playtesters throughout the year, but we are happy to see that most of them are positive, and we have seen a great response in the engagement part, as the players often tended to play for long periods of time.

This response from our players, as well as the enthusiastic response to the concept of the game, has led us to know the game has huge potential we would love to take advantage of.

This is all for now, but there will be a lot more in the future. 

Thank for reading and being with us in this part of the journey ;3 !!!