Assignment 3 Postmortem

I can't find a good image for this post, its due in three hours cut me some slack.

Ok, we know the format at this point. Assignment 3 Lethel Cuts, good and bad, Successes and Failures.


 Successes

  • Everyone had fun, this is a big one. I was really afraid of going into playtests with a buggy game that people just didn't want to play but for the most part our testers had a great time. I know that it being multiplayer really affects this because even a boring game played with friends can be a good time but its still a good thing. 
  • The intensity bar. Turns out to be a great mechanic once the players understand it. people enjoyed how it worked in a competitive match but also would experiment with it on friendly terms with their opponent to see what they could do with it and how it effected the game.
  • art and music, many people said our game looked and sounded great which was something I wasn't thinking about until it came up but I'm very happy about it. All credit goes to the sound and art guy on the team.  
  • Speed of the game. matches of Lethel Cuts end quickly as just one cut puts a character down, I was worried that people would expect life bars and be annoyed at things feeling "cheap" or unfair but there were no complaints. 
  • Movement, every play tester we had made at least one favourable comment on the movement in the game. Jumps felt great and just moving around the stage was fun. Infact many requests for features cantered around more focus on this part of the gameplay. 
Failures
  • Blocking, Oh man was blocking bad. Its not fun, its not effective, its incredibly confusing. I couldn't imagine a worse block. Every player disliked it and either quickly ignored it or worse abused the bugs surrounding it.
  • Speaking of bugs, bugs. Not so many but a few significant ones, the block could be perpetually sustained and as there was no way to break a block it just locked the game until the blocking player gave up. Also when you died you could press the block button to come back to life messing up the whole round system. It was a bit of a mess and we had to on a few occasions instruct players on how to avoid messing up the game in this way.
  • Air attacks, we intended the air attack to be a soft counter to the ground attack but the hitbox shape along with our jumping resulted in the air attack only being viable against other airborne characters, and as there was no other reason to jump it made the air attack entirely useless and some players didn't even notice it existed.
Ultimately im fairly pleased with how the game weathered the playtest experience and im proud of my team and our decisions. I think the block was just a mistake over all, we included it because fighting games have block buttons and we were making a fighting game but I think the best way to fix it is just remove it entirely. Players can still defend themselves with movement options and the sword clash. Some players wanted a heavy attack to break the block but I think that would just slow things down, not to mention making the block even more useless. Although I would like to see an increased variety of attack options. 

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