Playtest Party Aftermath

This evening was a small scale playtest party with Randy  O’Connor (who had played Escape Goat) and two of his friends (who had not).  Huge props to them for sticking through and playing the WHOLE game start to finish, trading off levels among the three of them.  Things got started around 8 and ended around midnight, with some breaks in there, so we’re still at about 3 hours of gameplay give or take.

I’ve got tons of notes, so it’s a matter of determining what’s possible to do for this game while still keeping control of scope.

I can also proudly say that for the first time, there’s no placeholder music in the build anymore.  Not all songs are complete, so a couple levels shared the same background music, but it was all mine.  I’m digging the sound so far and I hope you will too.

Preparing For Tomorrow’s Playtest

This morning was lost to computer issues, but I recovered and came back strong.  Inspired by the awesome Bastion soundtrack, I got pumped up to make some Escape Goat music.  As of this evening, I’ve got drafts and sketches for 14 songs, and only need about 9 final pieces to complete the soundtrack.

Tomorrow night is a playtest with an all new crew, and this should be the first time it’s got all the placeholder music stripped out.  Exciting!  It’s coming together.

 

What’s Left To Do?

  1. Most of the music
  2. Some of the SFX
  3. Make the editor a bit more user-friendly
  4. Fix squish detection glitch
  5. Adjust difficulty of final stage
  6. Handful of single-frame sprites
  7. A few touch-ups to the UI and pause menu
  8. Evil Checklist torture testing
Eight things, it seems doable… Maybe I can knock that list in half tomorrow?

Infinite Loop?

Test, write tasks, fix bugs, adjust graphics, adjust levels, work on music, test, repeat…  it’s like Groundhog Day.  I’m proud of the game and there certainly moments of glory in the development,but I’m also going to be REALLY happy when Escape Goat is done.