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[mfro]

Hello people. We are making a game called Mogu! We have been working on for several weeks. The gameplay is a platforming based puzzle that revolves around flipping and rotating panels. When the player flips or rotates a panel, everything inside the panel is moved, and gravity is re-oriented as well. Using this mechanic, we have designed a series of puzzles that we hope are fun and engaging.

Based on player feedback we have received in the past weeks, the primary area to focus on is game clarity. We got a lot of feedback about the limited visuals, especially around concerns that people would not take the time to really experience the puzzles if they weren't drawn in by engaging visuals. Our goal for this week and next is to get the visuals and aesthetic of the game to a level where people will take the puzzles seriously. Another area that is very important for drawing new players into the puzzles is the menu and tutorial levels, so we also spent some time developing these. We are pretty happy with where the tutorial levels are at, but we know we have some more work to do with the menus. Specific goals include better menu visuals and a level select screen.







https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Lp5IkvIiyzT8K_QMyGiLmI0WyFeiYCSP/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HnxKCdP8B_-F5CL9zzFF91A8VYq2Q9nj/view?usp=sharing

[mfro]

We made a lot of progress on our game Mogu in the past week. As promised in our last dev blog, we focused primarily on the aesthetics of our game. The gameplay and level design was at a point we were pretty happy with, so we did only some minor reorganizing and tweaks in those areas. For the aesthetics, we replaced almost every art asset in the game. Even the titular mushroom character got a bit of a facelift. Hopefully the updated aesthetics are enough to catch a player's eye and draw them into the puzzles. The menu also got a huge overhaul including a palette update, introducing art, and animations.

Our plans for the next week are all focused on polishing the game. We are considering several more aesthetic changes, especially around making the world feel more interactive and alive. This might include particle effects, updated visuals for the panels, and who knows what else.

List of changes:

• New brick art
• New door art
• New background art
• New bird art
• New cloud art
• New UI art
• New controls hints art
• Small tweaks to crate art
• Small tweaks to mushroom art
• New sound effects
• New screen shake effect
• New death animation
• New transition animations
• Small level adjustments

mac download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hrPcGGcbxtp9p0qp8zMO8PoKOYQ2mC3D/view?usp=sharing

windows download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rMPKfz2eagNS3hGfSa1s7dcwElTnEu7H/view?usp=sharing

[Ramos]

Very cute character art. gj
Also, considering your character theme, it would be funny if you would make the final boss Mario.

[mfro]

Mogu gets a smaller update this week, mostly including polishing to prepare for today's release. Instead, we focused primarily on preparing the itch.io page (https://mfroehlich.itch.io/mogu) where our game will be hosted and other material outside of the game itself. Some of the aesthetic changes that we considered last week also made it in, including more background art and menu art.

The other main change to the game itself was to the difficulty curve and level presentation. We have trimmed down the first two worlds to ten puzzles each, and moved some of the more difficult puzzles to the third world as a sort of bonus challenge.