Getting the Itch Page Ready

With almost all of the actual board items done (that we felt we could implement) it was time to start getting the Itch page for the game looking spiffy. Well, at least not just the default page...

It was a pretty simple update. I added some text to the description and whipped up the banner you see above. The banner was tricky because the size Itch recommends doesn't span the full width of that column. I added a vignette with the same color as the column background to help blend it in. Without the vignette the edges were really sharp and it looked goofy. With the vignette it looks less goofy, though I do wish you could take up more of the column.

Anyway, the Itch page should be good to go when we release tomorrow!

Final Tuning Pass

We were reviewing what still needed to be done and we realized that we wanted to make one more tuning pass before release. There were some things that didn't quite feel right and needed to be tweaked.

Here's a quick list of things we tweaked: - Player Tether Distance and Delay - Halt Caravan Duration - Light Spell Duration - Glimmerstalker Speed and Quantity - Making the Game Longer

Player Tether Distance and Delay

The tether distance (how far the Player can get from the caravan) was set way too high and the Player could easily reach the edge of the map before dying. We shortened the tether by quite a bit which made the warning appear earlier as well as start the death timer earlier.

The tether delay dictates how long after the Player leaves the tether range that they die. Initially, the delay was way too long and you could run outside for quite a while before dying. We wanted the delay to be long enough to give the Player time to return to safety but not enough time to basically stay outside the tether.

We ended up changing the delay from 20 seconds to 8 seconds and it felt much more important to get back to safety. Both of these changes combined made it feel much more impactful and kept the Player from reaching the edge of the map as quickly.

On that note though, the Player still could yeet themselves off the edge of the map if they were dedicated to running directly at it. That was not desirable and we couldn't really fix it by reducing the delay any more (that would just feel unfair). So, we took part of the idea we had for reworking the tether and applied it here. We added colliders along the edges of the tiles that the Player shouldn't be able to go over.

The screenshot above is the starting tile. You can see that it has colliders along the top, left, and bottom sides of the tile. We left the right side open because that is where the Player needs to go. The colliders stop them from actually reaching the edge to give some illusion that it isn't just an empty void!

Halt Caravan Duration

The Player has the ability to halt the caravan up to 3 times. The caravan slows down to a stop and stays that way for the duration. Once the timer has elapsed the caravan would start moving again. The intent behind this was that you could halt the caravan if there was a snow pile nearby or someone panicked so you didn't have to worry about the caravan leaving you. The trade off was it would take longer to reach the end. The Crews' Warmth would still be decreasing and the Glimmerstalkers would still be harassing/stalking.

The problem was the duration was set really low so by the time the caravan actually stopped moving, half the timer had elapsed. We bumped it up quite a bit and it felt much better. It felt like you could actually go do something away from the caravan before it started heading out again.

Light Spell Duration

The light spell would hang around too long, which allowed the Player to reset the Glimmerstalker so it wasn't stalking them anymore. The intent of the spell was to give a very temporary reprieve and you could get a better reprieve if you timed it right. As it stood, you could just drop the light, stand in it, and remain in it long enough.

We reduced the time the light stays active to be under the "safe" time where the Glimmerstalker stops stalking. Technically, you can still do that with the new duration but you have to time it perfectly right as the other light goes out

Ideally, I would like the dropped lights to not reset the Glimmerstalkers back to the Harassing state at all, and only let the lights on the caravan do that. But, that is more work than can be done before tomorrow!

Glimmerstalker Speed and Quantity

When the Glimmerstalker appears when it is attacking, it moves towards the Player or the Crew at a given pace. This is fine for the Crew because they are slower than the Player and can't outrun the Glimmerstalker. However, the Player was faster than the Glimmerstalker, so as long as you ran away from it, it could never catch you.

We roughly doubled the speed of the Glimmerstalker and now it actually felt more dangerous! I think it could even be bumped up some more but I think it is good enough where it is at now.

We had set the Glimmerstalker quantity to one when testing and felt that it was better when there were two. It added more variety and bumped the difficulty up some more.

Making the Game Longer

The game felt a little bit short so we added another tile, for a total of four tiles. This extended the gameplay enough without having it drag on.

Fixing a Restart Bug

Andrew ran into a bug while testing over the weekend where if you played the game, went back to the Main Menu, then started a new run, everything would be frozen. We tracked this down to the Time.timeScale not being reset to 1 when we started the game. When we pause the game we set the time scale to 0 to pause everything and when you click Restart it sets the time scale properly. Not so if you go back to the Main Menu instead of restarting directly.