Suzy Cube Update: March 2, 2018

#SuzyCube #gamedev #indiedev #madewithunity @NoodlecakeGames 

A nice full week of very subtle improvements across all levels. And some new friends in Mexico!

Let's All Go to the Movies

First of all, I wanted to give a shout out to One Simple Idea out in Mexico who have been contracted to make a new trailer for Suzy Cube to show off at GDC! I'm really excited to see what they come up with!

Wow! Wait a second! We're already in March!? That means GDC is but a few weeks away! How exciting and scary!

Getting Better All the Time

With things coming together well for the upcoming conference, I decided to spend the week going through the game once again to make more subtle improvements to the levels. The whole point of partnering with the cool folks at Noodlecake, after all, was to allow me to concentrate on delivering the best gameplay experience possible!

So, no, nothing flashy this week, just that good old attention to detail that's so important to a great user experience.

You spin me right 'round!

A lot of what I've been doing has been to add more coins to collect in, basically, all levels. Two big reasons for this: 1. Coins are fun to collect! 2. More coins equals more lives!

It was an easy way for me to ensure players have enough lives for the tougher stages while also adding more bling to collect. Apparently, I really dig the rotating groups of coins, because I ended up using them quite a bit during this improvement pass. I like the way they add motion and catch the eye, I think.

I also made some small design improvements here and there, tweaked enemy placements and other pickups, stuff like that. One not-so-insignificant change was to move the goal on Level 5-1.

Just a bit farther...

I spent some time playing around with the Double Jump hat trying to get to spots I shouldn't etc. In many cases, if I did get to unexpected spots, I opted to simply add coins to those hard to access nooks and crannies rather than wall them off. I want to reward exploration, after all. Being able to skip the last challenge on Level 5-1, though, was a bit much. I moved the island on which the goal sits a bit father since I was able to bypass having to fight the Skull Bullies to make the bridge rise from the lava with a trivial double jump and glide over to the goal! I think the jump might still be possible if you catch air by bopping one of the baddies while it's close to the far edge of the platform, and if it is, I'm fine with that, because that's going to require some serious Suzy skills! I just didn't want the Double Jump hat to be handing you a free pass to beat the stage with no effort.

Packing

No, not packing for my trip, not yet anyway. I got to spend hours, if you count it all up, staring at progress bars as I baked and re-baked lightmaps on a bunch of levels. After all, I want to ensure I'm squeezing all them sweet texels I can out of 'em!

Packed in, nice and tight!

Now, all the game's levels have nicely packed and optimized light maps! I also found out that, on my crappy internet connection, I really shouldn't try to upload more that two or three lightmaps to the GIT repository at the same time! After a couple retries, I was able to get all my work uploaded, fine. Lesson learned, though!

Well, there we have it! A week of subtle improvements, all for the players! Don't nobody every say I don't care!

I'll see you next week. Not sure what I'll have for you then, but it'll probably have something to do with GDC, which is coming up fast! AH!