We spent time playtesting the game with friends, and a bunch of kids these last 2 weeks. They all thought the game was fun and original (I still haven’t found another action trivia game out there). Today’s video is a portion of a 2v2 multiplayer match from one of our tests. There are some tweaks that we’re going to make this week, based on the feedback we’ve gotten. We’ve come a long way since we started back in May 2021, but there’s an even longer way to go before the game is ready for release.
For the first time, our gameplay video features the question system. You only get a couple of questions during a match, and if you answer correctly, you can use your character’s skill. You have almost no time to answer, so there’s no way you can google it. Don’t worry though. Questions are personalized to your level, so you should get them right most times. If you’re desperate though, you can use a bomb to eliminate half the answers, and you can mess with one of your opponents’ screens as they’re answering, if you want to be a jerk (lol). But they can also mess with you. In the future, we will expand the system to include teamwide debuffs/buffs should both you and your teammate get your questions wrong/right.
We’re making answering trivia questions super stressful… in a good way! Think athletes answering reporter questions at half-time kind of stress.
I used the bomb for testing purposes. I knew the answer. Trust.
We used a private server for our test sessions, as we’re still in the process of implementing Amazon servers. With our team spread out across the US and Brazil there is a bit of choppiness with some characters syncing. Completing our transition to Amazon hosting will help eliminate the bottle-neck caused by the private server, offering a smoother experience. In addition, our prototype doesn’t have client prediction and deterministic rollback yet (it makes multiplayer a lot smoother when players have higher pings). These netcode improvements will be incorporated later during full production.
Here’s a list of tweaks we’ll be doing the next few days, before we truly finalize our prototype and start the fundraising process:
Slide tackle detection needs to be a lot closer to ball
Reduce the wall kickback force
Let players jump while dribbling, but with caveats
Fix skill VFX for Brand’s dark cloud so it doesn’t clip through the floor
Add a check in case a character manages to warp through the arena walls into cyberspace (and maybe an achievement) resetting their position back into the arena.
Trivia mess-with blob recolored to some gooey looking color
Make it harder for characters to intercept and possess a fast-moving ball. Faster balls will bounce off instead.
Wish us luck!
See ya in two weeks!
- Lucas
Comments