Devlog 5 - Updates based on feedback

We had a testing session for the game on Friday (24/05/2024) and it went off without a hitch :). Lots of great feedback was gathered from all those that participated in the game.

First off, most people liked the art style I was aiming for :) which is wonderful to hear. I will probably still attempt to make some improvements to the animations in the future, but for the time being, I'm happy with where the project is sitting (WHOOOOOO!).

People were also in general happy with the level design and thought it had a decent level of challenge.

The testing session did let me discover that people did not immediately understand the controls or understand what to do. The majority said it made sense only after an amount of time. I will have to add something to help fix that, whether it be a tutorial or an in depth instruction manual. I have uploaded a user guide to the game with the explanation of the game and its controls, hopefully, that  will do for the time being.

The people have spoken and a whopping 67% of them voted for the inclusion of both easy and harder difficulties to the game. And so, taking feedback onboard, I have added both an easy and a hard mode to the game (the previous difficulty is now the "medium" difficulty").

some bugs were encountered during the testing session that i was unable to replicate.  specifically, there was one where a character was stuttering and another where the boxes were appearing on the screen every time a box was placed on a switch. I will continue to monitor to see if the bugs can be replicated in the future. 

There was also personalized feedback given

And I have acted upon some of it. Specifically, I have added background music to the game to give it some life and I have *sparingly* added particle effects relating on where to go if an event happens off screen (I don't want to give all the answers away in a puzzle game after all). Other feedback was still appreciated and may be acted upon in the future, but unfortunately, I had run out of time to implement everything.

All in all the testing session was amazing. It was an awesome time and i appreciate everyone who was able to play my game and give feedback and so, from the bottom of my heart....