Split Prototype Phase Launch

The initial planning stages of this project were done hastily, and I believe I could have spent more time and effort during those periods of time. I started and will continue to plan before each weekly sprint that I conduct for this project, so that the sprint goes smoothly and development stays on track. I learned about how to use Agile methodologies in my classes this past year, and I plan to continue using those for this project. 

This project started as one for school, but I enjoyed the idea of it enough to continue working on it on my own. This initial update is about the launch of the first phase of the game: the prototype phase. I wanted a game that switched UI when changing between character types to highlight the change to the player in an easy-to-understand way. I did this by switching the colors of the player, environment, and UI, as well as changing the background music to fit each character type. Each character type also has two unique abilities that they can use, which correlate to their emotion. This game started as an experiment with coding features into a game, and I would like to continue updating it with better features, art, level design, and overall polish.

Some major things that I learned during this project's first development phase are:

• Fixing bugs as soon as they are found is crucial to keeping the project's development pace constant.
• Keeping a visual representation of ideas, tasks, or even bug reports, helps keep the project organized.
• Documenting code while it is being written will save a lot of time in the future and keep scripts easy to understand.
• UI matters a lot to a player's overall experience and should be treated as a main pillar of development.

This first phase was launched to itch.io on 06/04/2024.