The Finale

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The Finale...

So, here we are. It's the end of the run and our project is completed. Did we have unfinished features? Yes. Did we need to scrap content? Yes. But what is most important, and is something we are really proud of, is that the entire game works, is finished and is polished as much as we could. So instead of the usual art talk I give to you each week, I will use this section of our devlog to look back upon the entire project, show off the evolution of some different aspects of our game. And talk about some scrapped / planned content that we never got around to implementing (and might potentially work on someday). So strap in, grab yourself a nice, refreshing potion and let's get started.

The main level

So, most of our gameplay takes place in this forest clearing. And we spent a lot of time making sure this small slice of terrain looks as good, and feels as good, as possible. We have slowly but surely added decorations, improved our meshes, polished up our shaders, and so on and so on. It might just be best to take a look at this video, and if you think you have seen it before? Then think again, because this time it is 100% completed and shows the entire progression from start to finish.

Main menu and winning screen

Staying on track with the theme of 'levels' lets take a look at the first and final renditions of our main menu and winning screen. As you can tell, some of these used to be in VERY unfinished stages. And others almost went into a completely different direction!

A screenshot of our old winning screen, where the losers got what they deserved

An early screenshot of the main menu

The Characters

Speaking of a different direction, our character also used to look a lot different back when we first started. Our snails had different colours, the witches looked much more humanoid, etc. But over time we have finetuned these to be what you now see in the final game.

The UI

We already had a vision pretty early on for what our UI would look like (more of less). And we designed some of the game elements and models around some of the UI elements, rather than designing the UI around our 3D. But even though we had a strong vision from pretty early on doesn't mean our UI didn't go trough some growing pains. Take a look what we had (or tried) before!

Scrapped content

Unfortunately our time was limited, and there was only so much work we could do. There was a bunch of stuff we worked on, or planned to add that we never fully got around to finishing. But potentially one day in the future we might still wrap up these loose ends and push out an update.

A screenshot of all of the potion meshes that are in the game files, unfortunately many of these were never fully finished or ended up not getting any functionality.

Here is a design for a potential second map, where the frost potion (also known as slow down potion) would've been able to make temporary ice platforms on the water. The idea was that you would have to make the land for your snail to cross, before it could make it over the river.

An unfinished decorative witch hut. This hut could've potentially acted as the spawn point for each player.

One of the scrapped potions would've made it possible for the cauldrons to start walking around.

Wrapping things up

Now before I hand things over to our programmers, I just wanted to take one last look back and go trough my files and look for some silly pictures and screenshots we took during our work on the game, so I could share them with you. So with that, I will let our programmers do their part, and potentially see you again in the future. Thank you for reading our devlogs, I hope it was interesting or you could learn something from our journey.

From top left, to bottom right. Old logo/Name ideas. The very first 3D models for our prototyping phase. A Sketch that was used to explain a rigging issue between artists and programmers. The final snail blueprint, that would blast your screen with each particle. A screenshot from a test rig for our original snail model. A screenshot from a bug, that would make it possible to make items bigger. Biblically accurate frog. The hidden camera man who is still lurking in the game, our of sight.

Programming Stuff

Like the snails we struggled forward with the supervisors giving us the potions to continue in the correct path, we finally reached the finish line. Last week we already had a fun and complete game, now it was time to go deep in to the details. We had to bring our heads together for this, asking ourselves. How can we make this even better? Answer: More playerfeedback. We added a controller vibration. Soft for little bounces and actions and a good one for actual collision.

When we flip the game around with our teleport potion, the camera will now give a good short shake. Perfect for giving the other the message ‘I got you now man’.

What also seemed to be a fun thing is, put some life in the ingredients, like having the eyeballs staring at you during the game.

And off course find and fix all the possible bugs in there. At every little action or event, test it and think how it can be better.

The more we worked on it, the more we wanted to do.
-Giving more feedback by more animations, VFX,..
-Bringing even more life to the ingredient, making more potions with all kind off crazy effects.
-Adding more easter eggs in the game.

It was a great experience, and we are proud off our result.

-Snail and potions team