The Haunted Night
Polishing the Game
Polishing the Game:
After finally completing every level, it's time to see if there are things that could be adjusted to make the game more appealing for the player.
The first thing I noticed is that it looks boring if all the player will see is white text. There is no sense of adventure or travel at all unless the read the text and try to imagine a little. I thought that if I gave the player some sort of "signal" that they actually moved to another place or did something good or bad, they'd know right away without even reading a word.
The answer was to change the color of the borders for each place that the player visits. A change of color would immediately tell the player that he has gone to a different place.
After playing through the game myself just to test it out, I found that the story could still use some improvement as well. Take for example below, a comparison of the what I decided to implement in the game compared to how I initially described it in the story/level overview.
In the original (on the right), there's actually three ways to die just for this one portion in the game! If you ignore the woman or continue walking, she'll vomit in your mouth and you'll die. If you choose to hide behind the tree, the ghost will make the beer bottle fly and stab you in the eye, pushing right into your brain! I thought that it was too punishing for the player and it might just bring frustration. I decided to lessen the number of instant deaths that the player can have in the whole game and instead changed it in a way that they will just be penalized with an increase to the Ghost Curse status value, which will lead them away from the "Perfect Ending".
