- The Jam -

Being the 2nd jam game created under the umbrella of "Beret Parade", Phase Force is our entry to the Phase Connect Unofficial #7 game jam. The original concept even before the jam was, we were going to build a Contra-style 2D shooter. Hell, even before landing on that plan the original original plan was to create a game with as little scope creep as humanly possible. It was holidays and we all wanted to take it easy, throw ourselves into a small project with a simple game loop and give it a ton of game juice.  If you have played the game you will have noticed it didn't quite turn out that way, a game with 4 levels, 5 unique characters equalling 10 unique character sprites, 10 unique weapon sprites with varied effects, gameplay objectives and 3 star level scoring system that persists, and having written eight songs and designed about 65 sounds, most of which were built from scratch. It honestly ballooned to a project I didn't think we could do in the time we gave ourselves. We didn't even actually start the project at the beginning of the jam, we arrived somewhere in the middle and grinded hard in that last week. The exact situation we were aiming to avoid. Needless to say Phase Force is our biggest and most complete game we've made yet.

- The Issues -

One issue that cropped up early on the art side was the amount of characters. I'm used to creating animated character sprites by this point but not 10! I ended up creating an animated template, where each limb was on a separate layer and gray, that way I could go in later and slightly tweak the sprites. Panko was the first girl I made and the hardest, she has a coat, she has a tail, and she has ears on her head. I would like to think Panko's sprite is my favourite in the game.  

An awful bug that slipped through to the jam release was the horrible scaling. Players with odd screen ratios could rarely navigate the menus without weird positioning issues. I humbly apologize to anyone that couldn't play the game due to that oversight. 

Lumi was the 5th character to be added, on the last day in fact... It was the artist's idea to draw the sword comically large. In turn Lumi became a God-like figure of destruction. Many players tried Lumi and breezed through the game on their first try. Sadly we allowed funny to overpower balance. Interesting fact about Lumi though, she is the only character who cannot physically get to the secret in level 1. 

Balancing was pretty hard for this kind of game. There are many aspects that go into making this game exciting and fun. For starters, enemies need to be competent, our developer made a crazy sight/listening system for the enemies, they can and will seek you down, shoot down ladders, and in some cases follow you up ramps. The problem becomes one of time in this game, the game loop works by having the player complete an objective and race to an extraction point where they win. I really wanted to replicate the sense of surviving on 1-hp by having a timer that counted down from when you complete the objective. My intention was for this timer to make your adrenaline pump and make you feel so much more satisfied after making it with little time to spare. The problem with this is I am the creator, not the player. The game will always be easier for me than for blind playtesters. And so after watching playtesters try out the game, the timers were adjusted and with it I think much of the urgency of the timer was lost. 

- The Patch -

And now we are here, a month maybe less from the end of the Jam and we have concocted a patch that aims to fix a lot of the nasty bugs from the jam release. We also spent a great deal working on general UI such as death/win screens. In terms of audio, we notice some sound effects were substantially louder than the rest and tweaked some knobs to get them in check. In general we also adjusted the volume levels of the music to better match the game dynamics. This patch includes a new teeny little song for stage and character select screens. We also included  a new settings menu where music, SFX, and character quips can be adjusted individually.

Patch Version 1.0

• Fixed screen scaling 
• Fixed secret areas being empty
• Added a death screen
• Added a final win screen
• Fixed Audio settings
• Added the player to the win screen helicopter
• Fixed Lumi's powered-up shots not bouncing on metal surfaces
• Added new muzzle flashes for each weapon type
• Added teleporter to level 1 secret
• UI readability improvements
• Revamped parallax background
• Added death animation
• Added death if extraction timer reaches 0
• All audio levels adjusted
• Fixed Music tracks not looping
• Fixed issue where extraction arrow would not point to extraction
• Added a NO AMMO! indicator
• Added Auto-Reload
• Fixed softlocks in level 2
• Added an infinity symbol to ammo
• Revamped menu buttons

- The Future -

There are many more additions we would like to bring to the game.

• Enemy death particles/gibs
• Character, Gun, and Power-up reworks
• More Levels!
• More Girls!
• More Objectives!

Overall, for Beret Parade this jam taught us a lot of stuff that is easily applicable to all future projects. We aren't all 100% about creating more content for Phase Force. This might be the last update the game sees. But who knows. There are still so many things this game could use, and many more things we all think would elevate this game to new heights (new game modes, new worlds, a phase base hub world!). Anyway that's it for this devlog, holy yap. Don't give me the Text Pad next time. 

Until next game, Cya gamers!

-Beret Parade