A lot of our changes this week were based around level development since we received quite a bit of feedback about our map being boring. We added 3 new unique areas to our map that the player can now explore and they also spawn enemies to force the player to move around a lot more than before. We also tried to make the days feel more unique by making our plants and enemies feel unique. We added 2 new enemy types that force the player to think about where they want to plant things and we also tried making the plant attacks more distinct so it feels like there’s a reason to use the different plants. One of the last changes we made was adding more visuals to try and help the player feel more immersed. We did this by adding lighting/particle effects to the nighttime plant, added damage visuals for the robots, added a player model, and added a lot more objects to the environment to make it feel more complete.

Some of our major things to fix over the upcoming weeks include balance, visual effects, sound effects, and models. For balance we’re going to try and take the same approach as Destiny 2 where players can feel extremely powerful but to prevent positive feedback loops we want to increase enemy density by a ton to try and make sure the player stays engaged. For visuals we are still hoping to hear back from an artist but if we aren’t able to find one we want to try and make the daytime plants fit the overall artstyle better and add better enemy models. Another thing we have been adding over time is adding particle effects to things. Since we are more comfortable with particle effects compared to 3D modeling we have been able to improve on these visuals over time instead of relying on somebody else to do them. We were able to find someone to do music for us so we’re hoping by the launch of our project we will have a custom soundtrack as well as adding better sound effects to things like plants shooting, enemies attacking, and player spraying water.