Proof Yourself

Proof Yourself
Proof Yourself follows that story of a young undergrad struggling through one of college's most difficult courses, Math 598: Great Mathematicians and how to Defeat Them. Now the only hope of salvaging your grade is through combat, so work with your professor, listen closely to his advice, and you may just pass the class.

Gameplay
Proof Yourself is a 2-player co-op game in which players must traverse through increasingly difficult stages of combat against famous mathematicians and their minions. The undergraduate and professor must explore their various combat mechanics and abilities to successfully clear each stage and ultimately pass the class!

Features

2-player online multiplayer powered by Parsec.
Roguelite functionality. Power through rooms one at a time filled with hordes of difficult enemies.
Unique items and enemies that both keep players engaged and on their toes.
Challenging gameplay for players to cut their teeth against.

Characters

The undergraduate navigates the level. Throw chalk at enemies, roll out of dangerous situation, and collect stamina for your professor. As long as he can stay alive, the team can still beat the level! Alone, the coming obstacles might seem insurmountable, but with the aid of your ally you can overcome any hurdle.

The professor is there to help the player. Use powerful items when stamina allows, buff your student to boost his abilities, or debuff foes to make them more manageable. Though it's impossible for him to beat levels on his own, he's more than capable trivializing most challenges.

Trailer

Downloads
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lnnIavROsg1deW20MXaQQmXeMtV8ekBr?usp=sharing

Devlog
Iteration is going to be our key to success here! Once a week we'll be updating this section to track our progress as we continue to develop Proof Yourself.

03/30/20

What's New

Opening Cutscene: To convert our project from local to online multiplayer, we made use of Parsec. To this end, we also created an opening cutscene that plays after the both players have confirmed that they're ready. We hope that this will improve thematic relevance and make it clear to players what's actually going on.

The Turing Test - Level 2: We put the finishing touches on the beginning of our second level. This level focuses on Alan Turing and his accomplishments in the fields of cryptography and computer science. This, of course, means a whole host of new enemies with new attacks and fresh new ways to interact with the environment!

New Items: Our old set of items seemed to lack thematic relevance and gave playtesters little reason to feel they were of use. To combat this, we created a new set of items that we feel will have a far greater impact on gameplay and overall enjoyment

Stamina Update: We found that requiring the professor to use his full stamina bar to drop items was creating periods of boredom for the player, so we halved this cost and are excited to see what players will think.

Improved Guidance: A side effect of all this new content is a need to update our guidance, so update we did! You'll find that in the beginning levels, there are more chalkboards ready to explain the new facets of each mechanic.

Looking Forward

Level Design: As we continue to progress towards our inevitable deadline, we're going to make a continued effort to improve the feel of levels. In other words, we're going to work hard to make sure that each level offers unique and inspiring gameplay that keeps players engaged throughout. This esoteric ambition often times leads to wild experimentation, so we hope that through the combined efforts of our team and our playtesters we'll be able to create something truly incredible.
Streamlined Tutorial: On a more concrete note, we'll be making an effort to limit the amount of text players are required to read in the future. We aim to eventually do this by replacing chalkboard texts with short explanatory animations that can be found throughout levels as the player needs them. We hope that by doing this, we can cut down on the amount of time dedicated to learning the game.

4/5/20

What's New

Scene Transitions: We've finally gotten around to adding some professionalism to our game! With this update comes a little long awaited polish that really ties the game together.

School of Athens - Level 1: We updated level 1 to create a more engaging experience for players by applying the design techniques we learned the creation of level 2. We hope that by adhering to this new ruleset, we'll be able to recreate some of magic we had in the latter level.

Guidance Updates: We listened to our playtesters and found that there was far too much text in the opening tutorial levels. To this end, we've cut down on some of that by replacing many of our earliest toasts with small animations.

Euclid Boss Fight: For a while now, we've been feeling that level 1's final boss fight left a little to be desired in terms of engagement. We attempted to address this issue by restructuring the room and ensuring that Euclid has multiple attack patterns for players to learn and adjust to over time. We hope that by doing this players will feel more of a sense of accomplishment for beating this boss.

Main Menu: Updates were made to the main menu such that players are now given the option to start and exit the game. Check out the Looking Forward section at the bottom of this weeks post to see how we'll be progressing from here!

Looking Forward

Polish: Next week, we're going to be attempt to update a good portion of our games idiosyncratic sprites and thematic animations. This will be done in an effort to improve the "curb appeal" of our game. We've been putting this off for as long as we could, but this week it's time to put our nose to the grindstone and power through these critical graphic and audio elements.
Game Option Availability: We currently lack any way for the players to either pause or select particular levels to play. It follows that we'd like this functionality in our game and are going to finally get around to visiting it next week. By doing this, we hope to give players more leverage to play what they want, when they want.

4/13/20

What's New

New Player Sprite: We update the character sprite! With this update we hope to bring a level of fidelity to our game yet seen. Let us know what you think of the design. As with everything here, it's a work in progress so your input is always valuable!

Camera Adjustments: For a while now, we've been receiving feedback that reflects players frustrations when playing as the professor. More specifically, because of the way the camera follows the player, it's hard for the professor to use items with any sort of accuracy whatsoever. To this end, we adjusted the way the camera tracks the player.

Health Bar Change: We switched to using a more traditional health bar design. We heard from a few play testers that the brains as lives concept seemed a little confusing and arbitrary, so we ditched it! Let us know what you think of the new design (also check out those boss health bars).

More Boss Fight Updates: The bosses have gotten harder and cooler to boot! Euclid and Turing both got animation and attack updates. We did this in an effort to juice up what had been otherwise pretty static fights. This, of course, runs the risk of over complicating the fight and making it too difficult, but we'll leave that up to you to decide for next week.

Falling Checkpoints: Prior to this update, falling placed the player at a predetermined checkpoint in the room. Now, we place the player on the most recent, safe floor tile they traversed. We did this in an effort to curb confusion and frustration with falling off. We found this tweak made the game feel much faster, so we hope you do as well!

Looking Forward

Level Juice: We're pretty satisfied as it stands with how much content is in each level, but what we could stand to improve is the quantity of aesthetically pleasing objects in each scene. It follows that one of our goals for next week will be to juice up our levels so they feel more fleshed out and connected to the student/professor/school theme.
Game Option Availability: We didn't get around to it last week, so we're going to see if we can this coming one. We still lack any way for the players to either pause or select particular levels to play. While we don't necessarily think this functionality is critical, we do think that this will add a level of replay-ability to our game that might otherwise be lacking.

4/20/20

What's New

Updated Sprites: After changing our iconic sprite from last week, we received a lot of positive feedback. We decided to go ahead and commit ourselves to this art style and pump out some cool new artwork. More specifically, the professor has been updated along with a few of your contemporaries in class.

Damage Indicators: We noticed that play testers tended to not use the debuff ability as much as we anticipated. When we asked them why this was the case, we found that it was primarily because they felt it wasn't doing anything impactful a majority of the time. In response, we've added damage indicators that show how much damage the player is doing at all times. We hope that this will encourage players make use of one of the games most powerful tools more often.

Turing Boss Fight Overhaul: For a while now, we've been noticing that people have struggled to beat Turing. To remedy this, we decided to overhaul the level layout entirely. We gave Turing more health, attack types, and a larger area of play for the player to explore. We hope that by doing this we ease the difficulty without trivializing combat. As always, let us know what you think!

Credits: We've finally added the appropriate conclusion to our game. This is the cherry on top of the Proof Yourself sundae that we hope you all have been enjoying so far!

Looking Forward

This will be our final update for the foreseeable future. This game has taught us a lot in the way of game design and development, and we're looking forward to putting that knowledge to use on new and exciting things down the road. We'd also like to take this time to thank anyone who helped us play test our game. None of this would've been possible without your insight and support. From our team here to all of you, we'd like to offer our deepest thanks.