Finalizing Our Game

(The books are sinking into the shelf.)

The past two weeks, we have been working on bugs fixing. We added or removed props and items in our game. We worked on making badges and trading cards. We changed and added some important story plots and information to improve the flow of the story. Then we submitted the game for approval.



FINDING BUGS AND PROBLEMS IN OUR GAME
Some bugs or problems were game breaking, meaning that the problem would prevent the player from continuing the game. For example, if you need a specific key to open a door and if you use the wrong key, the game might freeze and stop working. Or worse, the key disappears. Most of the bugs were found during the last two weeks of play testing. Because our game world is a semi-open world, we went everywhere to find game breaking bugs. We also cleaned up our scripts along the way.

(The drawers are there but the table disappeared.)

KEY ITEMS TO IMPROVE THE FLOW OF THE STORY
A common but simple mistake is forgetting to add an important information in the game for the player to find. This particular problem happens when the flow of the story changes, is added or removed. Sometimes, in order to make the flow more interesting and natural, important key elements in the story need to be placed well. We needed to make sure our game is not too short for players, while at the same time not too long and confusing. To improve the game, we also added better content and made sure that each character in our game had a closure to their storyline so there won't be any cliffhangers. We hope players can find all the secrets in the game.

(An example of story flow and how everything is connected.)

STEAM BADGES AND TRADING CARDS
We have an artist who volunteered to do the artwork for our steam achievements. After some brainstorming, we decided how many Steam achievements we wanted. The next step was to implement them in steam so that it can work properly. Since we have a lot of collectibles in our game, we hope that players can follow each NPC’s storyline and unlock his/her achievement. We also included trading cards that will be randomly dropped during gameplay.

(An example of our Badges.)

CONCLUSION
Ideally, it is best to stick to the original plan before production. In our experience, that did not happen. After fixing all the problems, we could finally submit our completed work to steam. It takes teamwork, dedication, and clear communication to pull off a successful project. We are still learning. There will always be ups and downs, but at the end of the day, we hope we have created something amazing for our fans.