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[studio_spades]

Stranded - Survival, Exploration

A Studio Spades adventure




Download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JTCg4z1reAaf-aIlYCUCkO95GZiPBGgk/view?usp=sharing

Alpha // Devblog 1

One of our biggest changes this week to the gameplay was shaving down the playtime of the game. Our playtesters were rarely able to complete the game and it felt like the player had to go through too many hoops to progress through the spaceship, so we just opened it up, shortening the length of the game & increasing the power of the player early on. We updated the map to have a more interesting & "workable" terrain - the initial one we had was very flat, with not many features. We plan on expanding this in the future, giving players more choices and variety in where they can get parts to repair their ship. We also fixed major bugs with our features, such as the gun and various death bugs, as well as added audio for the game and many sound effects. We also changed the perspective of the camera, as no one really liked the awkward 3rd person view we had before. First person was set as the default mode of the game, as we thought it would help the feeling of exploration the player gets.

Hopefully, within the coming weeks, we improve the aesthetic of the game through a higher quality map and streamline the gameplay experience some more. We had to cut houses and other structures this week due to time constraints & lack of development on the ideas, but next week they should be in with an interesting story to tell about the planet the player has landed on. Most of our efforts will be spent squashing bugs and adding cool features that won't bloat the gameplay time, like peaceful monsters or a more dynamic map.

[studio_spades]

Beta // Devblog 2


This week, we spent a lot of time cleaning up the aesthetic of our game & improving performance. We had issues with lag due to the vents system before, so that was cut in favor of a more "streamlined" storyline that takes the player through the demise of the planet in the zombie apocalypse. Our UI and guidance in general also received a big overhaul - the clunky bars on the side were replaced with much smaller ones, and text was placed more thoughtfully through the game. Additional features implemented include knockback, a much improved minimap that works with our storyline, and a redesign of the ship - no more of the white box with random katanas and guns dropped throughout! Thanks to the implementation of the story, we have a more clear-cut ability to progress through the game, letting us clean up the ship and streamline the game. We also caught A LOT of bugs thanks to our playtesters - hopefully, no more floating zombies. This was a really busy week for us!

Next week, we aim to polish the game, as we're nearing the endgame for our release - shorten the game if needed, clear up anything confusing that the playtesters found, and add some cool functionality to the ship. The map could also stand to be a bit nicer (though some terrain smoothing was implemented this week), so that will be done as well.


Check out the new build at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mzuber/Builds.zip

[studio_spades]

Gold Release // Devblog 3

This week is our project release! We're very excited to share the completed project with the world. During this final week, we mainly focused on elements of professionalism. We added sound effects for player footsteps and zombie noises. Additionally, we adjusted all the text elements to be more readable and upgraded the pause menu.



These changes were made to not only make the game look better and be more professional but also help the player feel more immersed. If the player doesn't feel like they're moving around or interacting with the world due to a lack of audio, or the pause menu/other UI aspects feel janky, we lose a lot of what we're trying to build with an open world.If we had more time or were to post future updates, I'd say the biggest thing we would change in the future would be adding more enemies and creating a longer story. Currently the story consists of 4 houses that present the player with enemies after being found. Since we had a time construct of 15min playtime we did not make it any longer. If we had the time we would add more enemies that were biome based and expand the story/map to give the player a longer and more fun experience. Mostly, a less "linear" path would be very cool to let the player piece things together, but it's really hard to show off that sort of thing in 15 minutes.



Lastly this week we created a marketing trailer which you can check out here:


You can find the latest build for Stranded here: https://mzuber.itch.io/stranded