The great outdoors (and abandoned facilities)! (Patreon)

Hello, it has been a while, since I put 100% focus into fixing bugs and adding things during the demo of Lethal Company. It was a very good time and I'm glad the game works (technically and fun-wise). I'm very thankful to everyone giving detailed reports which allowed me to fix most of the most game-breaking glitches. I feel that I've fixed enough bugs that most of the remaining ones are less harmful.

The last month and a half has been very focused on fixing bugs. I remember that when I announced the game's release date I worried that I had given myself too much time, but the time I gave myself was actually perfect. Now I'm still fixing bugs, but I am prioritizing adding content. Yesterday I added a new map tile which was previously scrapped content, modifying the scale of everything to fit in the game's tile/grid size and adding in some extra flourish from another piece of scrapped content. This tile probably sets a bit too high of a bar for complex, dynamically shaped tiles. 

This isn't even half the tile in view. The problem with bigger map tiles is that the map generator will have a hard time fitting them in, which is why I originally scrapped it. But this one's design is so cool that I've managed to fit it in by creating many more entrances to it. (There are 8 possible doorways!) So it usually feels fairly integrated into the map generations. I think my technique with the other gigantic scrapped tiles will be to cut them into smaller pieces so they won't be as disruptive to the level generator.

Problems

• A problem I saw was that the ship terminal can enable the player to become a back-seater who tries in vain to control the other players like drones. (Almost like... Duskers. Except here it doesn't work.) This can become frustrating and is one of the few negative interactions I've seen players have in the game. I know it's beginning when I hear the "Go left! No, not your left, my left!" conversation. Some ways I can fix this are giving the ship player more information to give to players and more abilities to help players (rather than control them) so they aren't sitting on their thumbs. There are several ship upgrades and items I'm going to add that will help players in the ship communicate and act more like a coordinator/strategist for the mission. But I don't want to make it too much easier for them to direct players exactly, since they're supposed to have a unique role.

• When all players die or can't get enough scrap on the last day, it's a little awkward. I'm uncertain how to fix this issue, since if the ship automatically detected if you have enough scrap to meet the quota to then fire you early, it would bring into question why you have to go to the company building to sell it in the first place. Also, sometimes you might be one or two credits short from reaching the quota (in which case there may be ways to make up the difference), and I think it's better to let players realize that themselves.

• Players losing all their items when everyone dies was too harsh. (I changed this so now players only lose scrap from their ship. It compromised a little simplicity to make the game nicer.)

• The game can be harsh for beginners. I'm not sure if this is actually a problem. Difficulty is only frustrating when it means you have to trudge through stuff you've already seen (like getting set back to a checkpoint). But this game is so randomized and non-linear that it doesn't feel like that. The reaction I've seen from beginners is usually that they are having fun anyway and are learning. The greater concern is players not learning how to use the terminal, perhaps because it looks scary.

Nature

I also added in birds, which are the first "daytime enemy", an enemy type that spawns during the day and leaves during the night. 

One of the most important and fundamental realizations I had about Lethal Company through its development was that it's a game about nature and wildlife. It's such a simple thing to describe, but maybe it was so hard to realize it until now because I was trying to replicate other games like Phasmophobia or Labyrinthine or Pikmin or Duskers or my own previous games. But all this time, many of the changes I made that pushed the game in the right direction were centering around the idea of nature and the outdoors. (When I added multiple planets/biomes, when I added the day/night system, when I added in the bestiary for logging creatures, when I added random weather, etc.)

Daytime in Lethal Company can be beautiful and wondrous, and it would contrast with the terror of night and the indoor mazes, like the two sides of nature. So I'm finally adding creatures in such as the birds that will leave when it gets dark. However there could also be creatures that appear only at certain times of day on certain planets, making it much harder to log every single creature in the game!