Week 11: Final Release!

Hey all!

It's finally time for the final release! The whole team has been working really hard to polish up the game and make it the best it can be. I'll just go over a couple of things that have been done over the past weeks, and why certain decisions were made.

Quick note, if you want to download the game just download it on the main page! There's a Windows build, and a Mac build. Also, check out the trailer there as well! One of the developers spent a lot of time working on it, and I think it's quite a good watch!

Also quick note to the marker, I uploaded builds v1.1 after the presentation on Wednesday (a bit after 9pm) after realising the changes we had made to one of the levels had not gone through. Since that build is passed the submission deadline, feel free to mark the original version (on top), just wanted to get our final game through to itch.

As has been reported in previous devlogs, the focus between Beta and this build was working on the instruction on the game. Our tutorial in beta was very sign heavy and quite confusing to the player when they don't know anything about the game. To combat this, we chose to implemented four separate tutorial levels, each one focusing on a different ability. We had the base ideas of these done by last week, but they're now fully integrated in the final build. We've also adjusted our old tutorial level to be the new level 1, to help ease players into the experience. Hopefully now that the main level is level 6, the player will have more knowledge of what's going on in the game and how they can use each of their abilities to beat the more challenging levels.

One other thing we decided to focus on was sprucing up the experience in general. One of the pieces of feedback that we had received throughout the various builds is that the flavour can be a bit lacking. For example, the maps are pretty plain since there weren't a lot of props added in. In response, we decided to add a couple of props to every level, with a couple of easter egg designs as well. Ideally this gives the maps a bit more life, and makes it more fun to look at.

Similar to the above comment, one piece of feedback was had received is that the "next level" screen is very sudden, and there is no gratification for beating a level. We decided to update our next level screen to be a bit more fun, with some stats showing the player their time and deaths for the level, as well as a fun image of Robin (our Robot) to help boost player morale. Hopefully this makes the next level screen more satisfying for players.

One controversial part of our game mechanics is meter depletion with insufficient meter. During beta, if you tried to use an ability but did not have enough meter, you would deplete your meter in that direction and the ability would not go off. This made the game a bit more challenging, since you could not spam an ability until it becomes usable, but was very punishing if you were barely off the required meter. We have heard comments that they would prefer it both ways, and we finally have the technology implemented this! Now, you can choose to turn off/on "Trigger Deplete" from the options menu. With Trigger Deplete off, the game plays like it did during beta, using an ability with insufficient meter drains it and the ability does not go off. With Trigger Deplete on, if you do not have enough meter to cast an ability, nothing happens (no meter is drained). Instead, if you hold down left/right trigger (or spacebar on keyboard) and press a face direction, you will deplete all of your meter in that direction. This way, meter draining is much more intentional. We decided to make it a toggle since we have heard from players that prefer both styles, so why not keep both in the game?

We worked on a couple of other fixes, but the majority of what we worked on was stated above. Hopefully this version of Cross Control gives a better user experience than before! 

Before we end this devlog (and consequently this project), I would like to go over some of the things we would've liked to do but didn't end up having time for. One idea we had previously was adding a boss level, a level that is different from all the levels we had so far where the goal would be more survive than kill all enemies. We had drafted a couple of ideas in the beginning, but they unfortunately never saw the light of day in production. Another idea we had was to add more flavour to the game, such as having each of the faces speak during the game. For example, the left personality could go "nice job" if you dodged through a bullet, or maybe the up personality could jokingly insult you for dying 20 times. We thought this would be fun to have, but again it didn't end up falling into scope. One other thing we wanted to add was more enemy types, including a persistent enemy that could not be killed. Right now, the right ability seems very hit or miss in most levels, and is often not needed to beat a level (though can be quite useful). Having this unkillable enemy type would incentivize the player to think more mindfully about the right ability, and theoretically could be used to create a more fun experience. However this again falls into a similar bucket as the boss level, as it would require thought about balancing to not be OP or underpowered.

Finally, I just want to give big thanks to everyone on the Cross Control team for all of your hard work. Thank you artists and modelers for giving us great characters and a nice sci fi game. Thank you music team for giving us an amazing set of background music, as well as wicked sound effects for everything in the game. Thanks to our rigger and animator for giving the robot life (I personally really like the mine poop animation). Thanks to the developers for putting up with all the coding we had to do, as none of it was particularly easy. And finally, thanks to any who plays and enjoys our game! I really hope you enjoy it!

That's all from us! Hope you enjoy Cross Control!