Greetings Backbeat fans!
It's been a couple of months since our last dev blog but that is how deep our noses have been to the grindstone. We are just a couple sprints away from the alpha version of our strategic puzzler Backbeat, and we have tons of content to prove it!
There are now forty levels in Backbeat! Our master designers Andy and Magnus have spent the last several months building final designs for all 20 of the mainline story levels which teach the mechanics of the game and take you through the dreamed of Watts and bandmates, as well as twenty more "remix" levels which are fun side quests used to unlock sweet musical gear, enhance your puzzling skills, and raise your band title to the limit. All that remains is one secret... well, we'll just stop there and you'll have to look forward to a big surprise when we launch.
Forty levels is a lot of places to visit and stories to tell, and this is where our set dressing and story team shine. David and Andreja have been decorating every club, gas station, and mall, meticulously recreating the feel of 1990s suburban USA. The lights, colors, and layout all evoke soft feelings of nostalgia from yesteryear. At the beginning and end of each level, a story segment plays where you get to know more about the citizens of Hornsburg, done up in classic 32-bit cutscene style.
On the other side of the office our UX and QA rep Simon sits concocting the next round's user test form. Puzzle games are hard to design because everyone sees a challenge in different ways, and through iteration and UI refinement we try to open up the accessibility a little more so everyone can enjoy. Each level is first created in a blockout partially dressed by the lead designer. Afterwards the directors and QA team try it out and provide feedback. After a second and sometimes third round of design adjustment, we prepare the level for user testing, studying how long each player takes to clear the level, where they get stuck, and which mechanics are not being communicated sufficiently. This leads us to a list of action points some of which we incorporate either by adding additional help UI and visual clarity to the game elements, or sometimes even adjusting the levels themselves.
Some of the UI improvements we've added in the past few sprints including the "keys and doors" UI, a zoom out feature, and the dithering of interior walls. A big part of Backbeat is using the environment to unblock certain characters' paths, or conversely blocking guards or enemies from reaching goals. This is done through an interaction solo with a special item we call a "key", which will affect some other obstacle collectively referred to as "doors". Keys are marked up with outlines on the objects, and a floating triangle on top. Corresponding doors bare a circle of the same color. This is useful when a puzzle involves multiple keys and doors in the same map.
Interior walls initially were made transparent with dithering in a small section when characters were directly behind them, but this wasn't sufficient to see all possible paths and understand what movement is possible, so we modified the rendering code to set all interior and southern facing walls semi transparent with dithering during gameplay.
Finally, after all this experience improvement, we of course need a few jokes to keep things light. Some of our favorite 90s brands are parodied in Backbeat and our lead artist Andreja has done a wonderful job incorporating them into our design aesthetic.
Later this month we'll be at GDC in San Francisco with the alpha version of Backbeat, some swag, and a very exciting announcement! We hope to see you there on the expo floor.
[h2]Join the conversation![/h2]
Do you have an idea for a dev blog topic? Curious about the team and story of Backbeat? Comment on this post or tweet at us, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Stay cool and funky!-- The Backbeat team at Ichigoichie
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