When I was planning the demo release, I had a specific list of tasks to complete by the release date. Unfortunately, not everything went smoothly and not all tasks were completed, but I had no intention of postponing the release. So I focused on the most important ones and was able to finish at least those in time.
The next step was to prioritize the rest and complete them ASAP. Today, I’m happy to say that the first batch of fixes is live with Patch 0.1.2 released.
What Changed?
The purpose of the demo is to show off the game, find people who might like it, and collect feedback to shape the game accordingly.
Fixing the Feel.
Most of the development process was focused on gameplay itself, the core mechanics: moving, stomping, jumping, squashing. But everything around it was kind of neglected. Take the game start/end cycle, for example, it's still far from perfect, but in the previous version, there wasn’t even a music change when you won or lost.
These kinds of mistakes don’t let you feel the game as intended. So in this patch, I focused on fixing the most critical issues breaking that feeling. Here's the list:
- Enabled anti-aliasing: the easiest one, but the impact on visual quality is huge
- Improved stomp when another foot is active: without this, some stomps were too short and missed bugs right in front of you
- Added time bonus points: important for rating goals that have no “wrong” bugs in them
- All non-goal bugs are eliminated on goal failure, only goal bugs escape: in goals where you need to kill just a few specific bugs, failing the goal used to trigger all bugs to attack the egg. Now only the bugs you were supposed to kill escape and attack
- Music changes when the game starts and ends: separate tracks now for menu and gameplay; the track changes when you start the game, fades out when you win or lose, and the menu track resumes when you return. No more funny menu music playing after a loss
- Added failure sounds on game failure: now there’s a scary bug-buzzing sound when you lose
- Added results screen value animations: values now appear one-by-one with nice animation, screen shake, and sound effects
- Better game success end animation: when you complete the last goal, the camera moves to show a cinematic shot of the egg, and only then the success screen appears
- Enabled player camera collisions: before, the player camera was hard-mounted relative to the feet, and could clip through walls. Now it adjusts itself to keep obstacles out of the way between the feet and the camera
All these fixes are aimed at improving the game feel and resolving the most critical issues that were breaking it.
Feedback.
Another important role of the demo is to collect player feedback, but guess what? There was no way to provide any. Like, at all. So one of the top priority tasks was to create a Discord server and add a button in the main menu linking to it. Not the hardest task, but definitely an important one.
Now the game has an official Discord server: Siar Games, where you can leave your feedback, report bugs, share thoughts, screenshots, or just chat with other players.
As you can see from the server name, it’s not exclusively for Bug Off, it’s for all the games I’m making. I chose this route because I simply don’t have the time or resources to manage multiple servers. Hope you don’t mind.
You’re also welcome to suggest other ways to leave feedback or report bugs, I’ll gladly look into any option that makes it easier.
Bugfixes.
The rest of the tasks weren’t directly related to game feel or feedback, but they were still little annoyances that made the game feel off, or made feedback harder to give. Here they are:
- Controller hint sizing: small adjustment to the UI element that shows controller hints
- Result screen rating calculation: yep, the final rating wasn't calculated at all until now
- Escaped bugs cost -1 point to kill: you shouldn’t lose points for killing bugs that attack the egg
- Reset camera on game start: previously, the player camera rotation carried over between games... ew
And that’s about it, aside from a few more tasks that aren’t worth mentioning here. Not bad for just 3 days of development, right?
What’s Next?
These were the most critical tasks I needed to complete ASAP. That doesn’t mean everything’s done for the demo, not even close. There’s still a big list of tasks just for the demo alone, and an even bigger one for the full game. So yeah, a long road ahead.
More game feel improvements are coming: visual and sound effects, UI polish. Also gameplay tweaks, like combo points. And did I mention a leaderboard? I’m planning to add one to the demo. Do you even want that? Should it be global, or a daily leaderboard?
If you think the game isn’t as good as it could be, and you have ideas for improvement, don’t hesitate. Leave your thoughts in the comments or on the Discord server. The meta-progression of the game isn’t set in stone yet. You could have a huge impact just by sharing your feedback.
And don’t forget to Wishlist the game, that simple click really helps me release it sooner. It’s like fuel for me. Wishlists and coffee make the game, not me :)