Dev Diary - 24 Apr

19 Apr 2021

A lot of time is also being put into getting the Steam store page up and running. This means taking screenshots, making videos, and even images for the different menu items throughout Steam. It's a lot of fun, but fairly time-consuming, and there are a lot of little details related to steam that I’d really like to get added such as achievements. The hope is that I can find time to squeeze it in, but what’s most important is just getting it shipped on time. Guess we’ll have to see.

20 Apr 2021

There are many many more pictures and questions than anticipated for putting things on Steam. I have now done enough to have it reviewed, so I’m awaiting the game page to be up and running. I wasn’t able to make a trailer yet because all the audio- even the music- are still placeholders. Working on writing some music myself, but will use free assets if I run out of time.

21 Apr 2021

With additional feedback from more playtesting, I decided to get to work cleaning up the issues they had. There were a few I was subconsciously aware of but kept putting on the back burner, such as rescuing crew members having a weird delay that made it hard for players to push the button to rescue them, while others I hadn’t even considered before like my playtesters being able to jump to a weird spot to see the boss between phases. Each of these issues have been corrected and I think the game is much better for them.

22 Apr 2021

Got the last bit of playtesting in with the changes from yesterday, so now I can start adding some of the other changes that I noticed with the new playtester. It’s nice to have so many because I can see different points of conflict for each play style and even add compromises to accommodate both. For example, I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t really need the full heal from rescuing the crew, but decided to keep it because the game isn’t really all that hard anyway, so people who are struggling will appreciate it and people who aren’t won’t notice it.

23 Apr 2021

This may come as a surprise, but writing music for the first time is harder than one would think. I'll give it another day or so, but I'm thinking it would be faster to just find free music. If I didn't have an end date coming up in a month I would love to keep hashing it out because I think I have something pretty neat going, but I don't know the software very well so the song in my head is struggling to be put to paper. There's still a few more things that are absolutely crucial to get into the final game, but a main theme is required to make a trailer, so it feels like priority. We'll just have to see how things go.