This was a short week, since I'm transitioning from these announcements going up on Saturdays to Wednesdays. As I approach the Early Access launch, I'll be showing a new level in each of these posts, here's the first one, titled "Getting Tilted":
And here's my best time:
Difficulty Rebalancing
The major thing I did this week was adjust the star times for every single level in the game. The way I thought about the original star times was:
- 1 Star: You did it!
- 2 Stars: You demonstrated a strong understanding of the mechanics, but didn't use any super jumps.
- 3 Stars: You used entirely super jumps, and demonstrated mastery of the mechanics / nuances of the game.
Part of my justification behind this breakdown was that I wanted to convey to players that there is a level of mastery that allows them to achieve much faster completion times than they initially thought they could. This often led to first time players trying a level, beating it with 1 star, going back and getting a second star, and then saying "Yeah that's impossible". It also lead to some serious frustration when players continued to bang their heads (literally) against levels without understanding certain things about the mechanics that could make achieving the 3 Star times significantly easier. I tried to prevent some of that by labelling the 3 Star times as "Impossible?", but people love collecting stars in games.
The star times weren't really a great way to convey this "next level" of player expertise, but for a while they were the only way I had. This changed when I added Steam Leaderboards. The leaderboard scores show the absolute peak of PogoChamp, even beyond what I think is possible, and if players need some advice about how to speed up their time, they can click in and watch a replay instantly. It's an amazing tool for teaching players what's possible in the game, and significantly more effective than oppressive star times.
With the leaderboard replays in place, it didn't make sense for the star times to be so strict. Almost across the board I adjusted them so that the old 2 Star times are the new 3 Star times. But for those of you who appreciated the challenge of the ultra-strict 3 star times, don't worry, I have something planned ;)
Experimentation
I also spent some time this week experimenting with new features that probably won't make it into the game. Sometimes it's important to try out something weird to re-ignite your enthusiasm, and this experimentation helped with that. I tried adding a speed-line effect based on character speed, but it didn't really make sense for this game, since the character changes direction pretty suddenly. It makes sense in racing-style games, since you're pretty much always moving in the same direction / away from the camera. If anyone has a good example of this kind of effect that handles directional changes well, let me know!
I also played around with leaving skid marks on the level when the player slides. I kind of like the idea of leaving a "permanent mark" on the level and having it be scuffed up and messy by the time you play a level for the 30th time, but in practice it looked kinda dumb. Overall though I think it was valuable, and gave me some ideas for possible future mechanics.
Changelog
- Fix replay character outline not rendering (due to Unity update).
- Update 2 and 3 star times for all 56 levels.
- Prototype speed line visual effects.
- Prototype skid marks from sliding.
- Fix issue where gravity was still affecting the players while they were teleporting.
- Add controller rumble to crash, landing and bumps.
- Fix issue where bumping into something while crashing would skip rumble firing.
- Relabel 3 star time from "Impossible?" to "Expert" now that they are less difficult.
- Remove some old disabled UI elements from Stats menu prefab.
- Experimenting with Achievements UI.
And don't forget to wishlist the game!