Hello there! We have completed our Vertical Slice game build! We would like to present to you the highlights and learning curves of it!

Here's a video of it in action:

Our goal was to focus on making the movement/combat in our game, PRESS REKORD, feel and look fast-paced and appealing for the player (fast-paced movement/combat being one of our design pillars). We also aimed to keep the characters and dialogue interesting, adding more art assets to help see the overall vision of the game (players enjoyed the characters/dialogues in the previous playtest).

Fortunately, we are pleased with our progress and we believe we were able to reach our goals! We added feedback stuff such as screen shake, visual combat effects (enemy direction arrows, puffs of smoke, hit effects, etc.) and we also polished and added to our core systems in Unity such as the quest, dialogue, and combat/AI systems, etc. In terms of visuals, we did not focus as much on the background art as we wanted to focus on the combat/movement feel, however, we believe we have presented a clear slice of our game regardless.

Our artists completed our main character's animations... here's Kat!

And... our evil Rat enemy's too!

Overall, this game build definitely brought stressful moments towards the end - we were panicking a bit to ensure our game hit the design pillars (enticing characters, fast-paced movement, and exploration) while also making sure the visual feedback effects were effective! We learned the importance of prioritizing certain elements of the game and having a clear question in mind to answer while creating a game demo/build and having players react to it. Soon this Vertical Slice game build will be playtested - stay tuned to hear what they think!

You can check out our previous blog here if you'd like! : Vertical Slice Progress

We hope you have a very happy Christmas too!

Megan (on behalf of the Crystal Crunch Team)

:)