Polishing... more (Patreon)

Hello! The past two weeks have felt monstrously long. I had to put my new enemy ideas on hold even longer, since I've realized polishing is going to take up a big chunk of the time this project has left. So I've continued to polish and test the game with a group of a few friends.

Some notable things that happened: I spent some time adding in a jetpack--yes, you heard it--which breaks all the game's character physics and pushed me to extend the game's boundaries so that players don't smash into invisible walls. This is a very expensive item, needless to say. I know adding this jetpack isn't polishing the game, but I was practically possessed by a ghost and forced to add it in.

[There was an image of the jetpack in action here, but I'd rather it be a surprise.]

I also got the game working on controller in just a few hours (since it was already set up), and it's now our preferred way to play. 

Don't miss the deadline...

Then I added the "profit quota" system back in. This whole project has a theme, in which design elements and ideas eventually return back into the mix, after I make the game big enough that they now have a proper context. Before, the profit quota system graded you on each day after you left the planet surface. I left this behind when the scale of the game exploded outward; what I mean is that days in Lethal Company are no longer "pure" or "self-contained" like each round of Phasmophobia. So you might do less good on one day in order to do better on the next. So this system of rewarding or punishing players for each day didn't make as much sense.

Now that the game has a persistent day cycle and other things, I could bring the profit quota back. Only now, it acts as a deadline spanning across multiple in-game days. 

Pikmin used to have a similar, 30-day timer, which is what gave me this idea; it pushed players to be efficient, race the clock, and sometimes take risks, which is the most fun way to play the game. In later games in the series, Pikmin can forego this timer (although I think it shouldn't), but Lethal Company's design absolutely needs it to thrive. If you can't pass this deadline, it savagely resets your money and takes back all your bought goods. So the roguelike side of Lethal Company has fully returned, after a long, roundabout journey.

Most of the other work has been about trying to fix ALL of the game's bugs and tweak the balance of the game. 

Over the past few tests I slowly turned up the speed of the day cycle to see what would happen. It finally reached a breaking point, causing us to lose the game tragically twice in a row, unable to get home before midnight, which just wasn't fun. So I turned it back down! There's many other knobs to tweak