Addressing Open Beta Feedback (Jackson)

Hey all! I'm very grateful for everyone who was able to help us out and give us constructive criticism. We're working to address all of those bugs and your suggestions!

As mentioned in the previous post, the lack of direction and guidance for the player had a large impact on progression and caused many players to get stuck and become frustrated. For my part, specifically, I will be working with Ian and Noah to put together the robot NPC, which will primarily serve to help the player learn their abilities in the memory scenes. I'll be writing the dialogue for it and I'll be emphasizing lines that can teach the mechanics of the game while fitting the world of the game and not breaking immersion. 

When it comes to solid level design, I appreciate games that force players into gameplay situations that will push them to use a new mechanic and become familiar with it, and so I've taken this approach to using each of the new abilities. In Memory 1, specifically, we're framing the prison cell escape sequence so that the player cannot walk or jump and can only look around (the implication is that they're chained/tied to the wall). The robot companion on the other side of the wall will tell them to use their telekinesis to break the wall down; they will grab the nearby interactable objects and throw them at the door to break it down using the push ability. In Memory 2, there will be a tower on the other side of the gap between the buildings. The robot will fly to the top of the tower and hover around it to catch the player's attention and there will be boxes near the tower that the player needs to pull from afar; they launch one at the tower to "loosen" it and then pull it down to cross the gap. 

Within the main scene, the protagonist/player character will articulate their thoughts through subtle hints in dialogue following memories/proceeding more confusing puzzles, such as "those colors look familiar..." in response to the green, red, and blue locks in the lower corner. 

All of these tweaks and changes should form a more cohesive experience that is steadily pushing the player forward We're slowly but surely making this into a finished project and the progress we've made since the beginning is really something to behold. I hope you'll stay to see the end. Thank you for staying this far, it won't be too much longer!