Hi everyone,
After what seemed like a rollercoaster of emotions and lots of head bonking against a wall we reached the polishing phase of our project. That means feature freeze and work out what we already have and what we know works for our game. With that in mind we did the following;

Art

Since the game project is coming to a close that meant that we had to finalize and polish everything we had so that the game is done and ready to ship. 

Last week we got a bunch of useful feedback on how we can improve the visual clarity in the level. Things such as the tutorial level feeling too dull, visual effects either being too extreme or not existing at all, the gameplay feel in some positions of the level.

First to tackle the level feeling dull issue we added more meshes as well as some lights to have some sort of gradient in our level to make it more visually pleasing.

Second we placed our latch door in different places and reworked the code slightly so that we can adjust the origin and end position. 

Though it being a bit more on the programming side, we kind of messed around with writing a script to visualize a number for the players in the game above the door, as well as players colliding with the door. This was done to solve the problem with players not being aware that they should go to the door to continue to the main level.

We adjusted some of the RFX as they felt a bit too extreme and added some new ones.

After having people playtesting our game, it was clear that we needed more ways to visually guide the players.

Icons such as arrows have been made to subtly show the way. Along with button icons to show how to use the controls. They have been animated to make it more alive and fun, making the players want to learn the button layout.

Minor visual buffs have been included such as electrical wire particle improvements and (wooden) signs but the most noticeable one would have to be the new "Ready, Set, Go!" text. Which makes the game more fun and exciting while staying within the art style of the game.

Code

Major Changes

• Complete Game Loop
  You can now play seamlessly from Main Menu → Tutorial → Level → Victory Screen → back to Main Menu, giving the build its first end-to-end flow.

• Stats Screen in Victory Screen
  Finishing a run now brings up a detailed Stats panel with per-round data.

Minor Changes & Polish

• Main Menu – overhauled layout and art for a cleaner first impression.

• Victory Screen – visual pass and layout tweaks for a smoother wrap-up.

• Tutorial Quality-of-Life

  • On-screen controller / keyboard button layout.

  • Door now shows live player count so everyone knows when it’s time to move on.

  • Round countdown art added to set the pace.

• Transition Controller – timing & easing tuned for snappier scene swaps.

• Grapple Flair – a small cloud-puff particle appears when you attach to the air.

• Dead Zone & Win Level Polish – visual FX and feedback tightened.

• Hydraulic press - Collision has been improved so that it only hits from above and squashes you

Bug Fixes

• Stats Screen button no longer ignores clicks.

• Player Pull wasn't functional after adding the midair grapple

Audio

All audio assets we envisioned for our game have successfully made it in to our game. I'm especially proud of the music I was able to make, it really emphasizes the speed and intensity of our game loop while still staying light-hearted. The vocalizations were also a lot of fun to make and implement using scriptable object delegation. I never made such a large mono class to handle stuff like that.

One small addition was created to the podium spawn sequence, whenever all players have died or at least one player reached 3 rounds a special podium stat screen is drawn. At this moment a stinger plays along with some specific music for that section. But it doesn't always trigger successfully. It doesn't break emersion when it doesn't though so its not a huge problem. It does give me lots of ideas for future iterations of this system.

All in all very excited for this project and hope everyone enjoys what we made.

Since most audio assets were already present I had time to help with general game flow problems and keeping our version control in check, the version control management itself was a very interesting and learning experience that I will definitely take with me.

Allow me to present the finalized overview of the mono AudioManager:

While cumbersome, the large mono class did allow for rapid prototyping, iteration and storing of assets in our scene as alternate of loading Resources. It also worked well to communicate what audio is present my teammates during this process.

And the MusicTransition:

As the Menu and MainLevel were different scenes, loading music for both was very easy to achieve. A simple SceneLoad method was used that checks the string name references in the above component. The Fade in and Out durations were also fun to tweak to achieve a balanced mix between 2 music sections.
As I already mentioned the RoundWin Music and Stinger don't always trigger correctly, which is a darn shame. But not the end of the world.

It was so much work but very rewarding!