Beta Build Devlog

Due to me falling behind a decent amount around the middle point of working on this game, a lot of this iteration was playing catchup. This meant I did not have the full feedback I could have had from the previous playtest, which left me iterating in my own way. Thankfully, from my own personal development I found myself wanting to add a lot more specific things. This would increase the scope 10 fold for a single iteration however, so to keep it within my allotted time, I chose to pivot and create this alpha build.

In this build, I broke the game down to a very bare bones version of the game loop. This meant basic interaction's leading to branching paths based on what the player decided to do. I limited the player actions and made a small basic puzzle with the world around the player changing based on what actions they took. This gave me the ability to test out really basic mechanics with how the game would look and finally get a full test with everything connected.

I felt like the gameplay worked out really well. My puzzle was simple but effective, the interactions all worked, and the space the player found themselves in was not difficult to navigate or broken in any way (Outside of a few textures).  The main issue I ran into with this build was a sudden break with the pause menu and a broken main menu if you returned from the in game menu. Other than these, thankfully all the other systems appeared to work exactly how I wanted them to. 

The UI was not pretty, however I think it did a good job at what it needed to. I think having a counter of how many actions the player had left really created a sense of needing to make sure each action was worth it, as you would now have a concrete visual that you were spending your one resource. 

this iteration was not without issues though. The biggest one for me was all program related. I have used Godot in the past however I haven't messed with 3D as much. Due to this, I kept running into small issues stopping me from creating exactly what I wanted in my original ideas. I think the biggest way this can be fixed in my final build of this game is to create a better system for myself of not getting committed to an idea before I can see if it actually works. This way I am able to pivot faster before I waste hours on a system that ends up not being in the actual game.