New Screenshots – Normal Mode

Hey PreAnimals

We are at the point in our development cycle where we can take loads of screenshots and videos.  So for all the loyal followers and the new Preanimals we have taken some lovely screenshots.  This is a quick post.

 

As always feedback is welcome.

The Final Tweaks.

We have had some really good feedback the last time the game was shown to a group of people, which makes us feel even more confident we are on the correct path to creating a game you guys will totally enjoy.

So here is a quick list of what has been happening over the last couple of months.

• Updated all the songs so “Normal Mode” works and it is fun to play.
• Tweaked the difficulties so 3 / 4 / 5 cubes are balanced.
• Adjusted the scores so the stars can be achieved by others (rather than just the robots at Preanima, who were getting incredible scores).
• We included a new tutorial for both modes, which fully teaches the controls and mechanics.

There are loads more but typing up a huge list would be a boring post, so we will capture some normal gameplay footage and create a cool video for you guys.

So here is a screenshot to show you PreAnimals how it looks.

 

Feedback is always welcome.

Challenge vs. Fun

I remember reading an article a while back talking about making a game for the public and not for your self, which was the hardest thing to overcome when balancing the game.  As a designer who has played loads of games, I have always wanted to make a game which will challenge me everytime I play, but by doing this Perplex Beats became hard for a new user to get into, but once players understood the game they seemed to love it.

With this idea of “making a game others would like to play” rather than a game which “we would like to play”, has taken the game in a slightly new direction which has helped make the game easier to understand while remaining fun to play.

Today after two months of not playing the original version, I took a screenshot of the game in its current state and put it next to the original version, and I can now truly understand why new players seemed daunted at first glance.

Well here are the two versions of the game and don’t worry PreAnimals it has not vanished; it is still in Perplex Beats; it just requires some unlocking which the core gamers will love.

 

Box Art – Perplex Beats

After the redesign of the frontend we were able to create the box art. This is really strange because when we was brainstorming on how the box art should look, it was a nightmare to create something that looks good when the only iconic references for the game was the name and the game logo (the cube).

So by doing the frontend artwork the box art just fell into place.

 

Tweaks / Remix

With the new XNA 4.0 update, Jeremy decided to disable the game screen so it was not scalable, as stated previously. This led me to tweak a lot of the in-game UI and frontend menus. I raged at first because I thought this would be a huge task, but by tackling this take made me look at the game in a different light and notice areas that needed to be changed / tweaked. A blessing in disguise for Perplex Beats because the game now has a more exciting feel from the get go and now all the game menus are unified.

I have to give a shout out to Sam Beard our superstar sound engineer for producing an epic remix for the frontend of Perplex Beats. Maybe we could put the original version up for the loyal PreAnimals to hear one day, but trust me the new version is a million times better with traces of the old track imbedded. I guess we now got the best of both worlds.

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