Daily Report - 01/01/2024 (Patreon)

Our new years' resolutions

Making Songs of Everjade better

As we’re approaching the end of our playtest, we can start looking at our next big “sprint”, with some key focuses being mechanically complete (we’re still missing the weapon rack / multiple characters), getting the art style more coherent, and working towards releasing a permanent demo on Steam.

As for our playtest some wins I want to share, we’ve gone up in median playtime to 12 minutes, which is pretty solid if you ask me for how little content/mechanics/variety the game had yet. We also had another 60 playtest signups and a lot of essays worth of feedback.

We weren’t just sitting idly during the playtest, as Thomas rewrote our scene-switching logic, so now there are no weird issues with enemies and UI spawning in after the player can see themselves already (this was too boring to make a GIF of).

One other quick win we did was try out some feedback of making the area that wasn’t part of the playable level black/another solid color, to clearly indicate it wasn’t part of the level. This was something I didn’t really feel like we needed, however it was a very common feedback point. I haven’t been able to see it yet though because Thomas forgot to commit these changes.

What’s next
Today is still going to be a bit of a calmer day, as we’ll be recovering from NYE, and a lot of the team has family obligations to attend. I’ll be sorting through all the feedback we’ve gotten from the playtest, start working on adding them to our issue tracker, and see if there are some quick wins we can do (horrible performance on certain devices, zooming the camera out,…).

"The New Year is like a new level in a game – full of unknowns, challenges, and adventures.”

Marnix Wyns

Producer & Creative Director @ BiteMe Games