We’re in a hot testing phase right now, as you may have noticed. As soon as we’re done with one test session , the next one’s right around the corner. And that’s good, because it not only means we have fixed deadlines we need to hit but also that we receive a good amount of valuable feedback from our testers that can be immediately added to the game. Our iteration cycles lie between two to three weeks and with each iteration, we notice huge steps in improvement.
As you might have guessed, lots of testing lies ahead as well. The next two weeks are committed to hardcore testing. Two weeks in a row, which we haven’t done before. The first round will take a look at the brand new iteration of our tutorial levels. We did test them in the last few weeks and immediately noticed a few things that definitely needed a different approach. The new tutorial is a lot more condensed, a lot more focused and is also tighter connected to the whole story. In fact, it’s part of the intro, the beginning, the prologue to the story you’re about to play.
Clemens, who has exchanged his work desk at our office with the calm and serene scene of the Alps this week, invested most of his time and energy this week and finding the right layout, the right colors and the perfect visualizations to create a tutorial that gets the controls across as well as the mood of the game.
Clemens took a few impressions of his new workspace in the Alps
We’ve come a long way with the first environment and while most of it has been built and tested, a few scenes are still work in progress. One of the most dramatic and important scenes, the storm, was finished just in time to present it to our testers. Together with the level design, new sounds were made and added. To create a setting that is both amazing and horrifying. Another scene that we’ve worked on is the fog, which has been around for quite a while and got a thorough re-design.
We’ve already told you about the second environment last week, on which we’ve started to work on. The first few scenes are almost ready to be tested thoroughly. We’re eager to see if the ideas are playable and fun. Clemens and Josef worked hard to create them. Along with these new scenes and challenges, new critters have also found their way into Chasing Aurora. We usually promise we will lift the veil soon, and we will. At least, one of the veils we’ve talked about will be lifted soon. Very soon. ;)
The single player mode is not the only game mode we’ve put attention to. The multi-player mode received a good portion of our attention as well. Especially Peter spent a lot of time tweaking, fixing, balancing and coding and started working on a completely new game mode. Which is, funny enough, again based on a famous children’s game. Because those are the best. Simple, and hilariously fun. We haven’t had time to test the new mode, though, so this is another test session that lies ahead of us.
We were also visited by two groups of young students, who took part in a trip through the Museumsquartier, the museum’s quarter in Vienna, where we’re located. They dropped by for a few minutes and were introduced to us, the office, what we’re doing (in general) and what we’re working on right now. Lovely bunch of teenagers who took our minds off of work for a few minutes.
In case you haven’t noticed, we’re taking part in the “Because We May” sale, a sale, which allows developers independently set the price for their products and allow buyers to grab some wonderful gems for cheap. And Yet It Moves can be purchased for a very low price on our own website, the Mac App Store and Steam!
This week’s achievements:
- Preparations for upcoming user tests
- New iteration of tutorial levels
- New scenes built for first environment
- New scenes built for second environment
- New sounds and music added
- New multi-player mode in development
- Because We May Sale!
Pingback: Dev Links: (i)Padding | DIYGamer