Suzy Cube Update: June 23, 2017

#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity 

As predicted in last week's update, my priority this week was to make sure I had a solid crop of levels to send out to testers.

Spit Shine

On Monday, I set up a list of levels to test which I broke up into 'rounds' of testing. Each round includes roughly six levels which testers can access via a dedicated button on the level select screen. 

So, for this week, I concentrated on playing through the first round of levels looking for tweaks and fixes I wanted to make before sending them out for testing. For the most part these were small things to help with readability or positioning.

Danger Zone!

For example, on Level 2-3, I added visible tracks in the snow to help players see the paths taken by the level's many moving spike rollers.

Some levels got a little more work done. At the top of the post, we've got a screenshot of Level 3-1, an auto-scrolling level which saw several sections removed and altered in order to avoid cheap deaths and boring stretches. The minimalist in me REALLY loves the feeling of improving a design through removal!

Level 4-2 also got some love even though it isn't slated for testing for a while. It's another auto-scrolling level involving lots of moving platforms. 

Long way down

I got early feedback that the level was harder than I wanted it to me, so I eased back on the speed of the scrolling and platforms and also lowered the aggressivity of the fireball spitting enemies.

Bee Mine

One other little thing I did yesterday, actually, was to follow a player's suggestion and add a more noticeable 'antic' to the Big Bee stomp attack. It now does a little wiggle waggle before crushing poor Suzy.

Toldja!

Kind of her fault for just standing there, though!

If You Build it, They Will Fun

After all these fixes and more, I was finally ready to prepare a testing build. After a couple of foibles on my part, I was able to test on my device, make sure Everyplay game clip uploads were still working and then package the build up to upload to Testflight!

That's right, I've got a test candidate ready to go as soon as I get the green light from my internal testers. As such, I expect to be sending out invites next Monday!

Once I start getting feedback and video back from testers, I'll be plunging into a cycle of video analysis and level fixes which will only serve to further improve the experience for all players once the game goes live!

That pretty much wraps it up for this update. Stay tuned as I'll be sharing the results of these tests as I go along and I hope to eventually share a deep dive into my testing process as part of the Lessons from Suzy Cube series. See you next week!