Devlog 5

Welcome to our fifth devlog for Know Your Wings.  A few weeks ago, we had our first round of playtests, which gave us valuable insight into what was and wasn't working, and led us to making many important changes since our last update, such as revisions to our control scheme, and major visual upgrades to the game.

Controls

During testing, players consistently struggled with the turning controls, finding them too clunky and wishing they were simpler, which we agreed with. Originally, you needed to hold one of the bumpers to turn horizontally in the opposite direction (if you wanted to turn left, you would hold the right bumper and vice versa), and you needed to use the left stick to turn vertically. Now, we've simplified it so that all turning is done with the left stick. On keyboard, horizontal turning is now mapped to the 'A' and 'D' keys alongside the 'W' and 'S' keys originally used for vertical turning, while flapping the left and right wings are now mapped to their respective mouse buttons. An option to invert the turning controls has also been included in the pause menu.

Game Design

Another difficulty for players during testing was with the Echolocation mechanic. Players didn't know how to use it despite efforts made to tutorialize the mechanic with clear visuals.  This, combined with rapidly approaching deadlines giving us little time to further iterate on it, have caused us to decide to cut the system from the game entirely, so we can instead focus on improving the core flight mechanics and other essential aspects of the game.

We've also made other smaller changes. The amount of Blood the player needs to collect has been reduced to 25 to make the game less demanding, but the number of Blood Drops and Mosquitos in the level has been unchanged, providing players with multiple options to complete their objective.  Mosquitos (flying objects the player needs to catch), have been simplified to now reward you with Blood directly rather than spawning large Blood Drops that you'd need to collect afterwards.

Level Design

We've made some minor changes to the level's layout. Due to the removal of Echolocation, the caves where it was intended to be used have also been taken out.  The player now also starts on an elevated platform, some distance removed from the rest of the level to give them a better view of their environment as well as helping them better learn the game's flight mechanics.

As can also be seen in the above image, we've made a lot of visual improvements to our level. A suite of more detailed textures has been added, and what were once basic grey cubes scattered around the two main areas have now been replaced with various tree, rock, and grave models to better sell their forest and cemetery aesthetics, making the environments feel more pleasing to the eyes.

Unfortunately, we've elected to cut the final playable area in Dracula's castle itself, due to the same time and resource constraints that forced us to scrap Echolocation. The castle is still the destination you're working towards, however now the game will end when you reach it rather than taking you to a new area.

Art

We've entirely redone the model for D, the bat which the player controls. This new version features more realistic anatomy, striking yellow eyes, and larger, more pronounced wings.

  

The UI has also received an upgrade as well, with the amount of Blood the player still needs to collect now being displayed via both direct numerical values and also a meter that fills as you acquire more of it. It also looks much more fitting for the game's aesthetics.

Finally, we've created an ending illustration that appears when you reach Dracula's castle, showing the end of the game and revealing that D was Dracula all along.

Music/Sound

For music, the track that plays during gameplay and the theme for Dracula's castle (now used for the ending illustration) have both been redone to be more dramatic. 

For sound effects, the sounds that play when flapping wings or collecting Blood (two things that happen very often during play) have been expanded to include more variations so they sound less monotonous. Mosquitos now also emit a buzzing sound.

Next Steps

With this devlog and milestone, our game has reached Alpha. It will soon be presented to and played by various industry professionals to give important feedback. Despite that, there's still a lot we discovered in our initial playtests to address. 

While our tutorials taught players that each bumper corresponded to flapping a specific wing, they failed to convey the specific rhythm you had to maintain with your button presses to properly fly (flap one wing, then the opposite, etc). We plan to add in-game button prompts that, when pressed, switch to the opposite wing to better illustrate this.

There's a slew of camera improvements we have lined up in the future as well, such as the ability to zoom in and out as well as lock it behind the player character. 

The level design is bound to receive more tweaks, including adding more trails of Blood Drops for the player to fly through as another challenge to better diversify the level.