This week we really focused on revamping our tutorial to match our theming, polishing up our glass jar level, and ensuring a good player experience. This came in multiple forms including tweaked mechanics, changing camera interactions, adding more scenery and materials around the level, and more. Our tweaked mechanics include smoothing out how the pulley platforms work, fixing our air vents, and changing the respawn our fire particles’ hotboxes and how they interact with the players such as adding i-frames. We also adjusted every puzzle in our glass jar to encourage and require player cooperation, as well as improve how the camera interacts with walls and tight spaces.

Most of these changes were in response to feedback from our last playtest that largely said our ideas and level were good conceptually, but it was too buggy and didn’t allow the player to really enjoy the game itself. We had a large focus on bug fixes this week for this reason and think that all of our puzzles and mechanics have been cleaned up and improved. We are hoping that this level has few bugs left after this week and hope to spend most of our time in the next iteration making our second and final full level which will take place in a pond. We already have ideas for this water focused level and have begun initial implementations with all our previous bugs and fixes in mind so we can hope to avoid many of the same mistakes.

Windows and Mac builds can be found here https://www.indiedb.com/downloads/beneath-the-canopy-a-miniature-tale.