Problem:

As we reached the end of our second month of development, we began to have more and more playtest sessions on Shutdown. As we listened to this feedback, we realized that our game's flow was not where we wanted it. The levels felt as if we had just thrown in ingredients. However, without following the recipe, the meal can't be made.  We decided this needed to change and I took on the challenge of redoing our level 2 and taking a look at how we were doing things objectively.

Solution:

To fix this, I was going to need to make sure all of our puzzles had proper starts and ends and redesign how we were introducing our puzzles.  The first thing I did was remove 90% of the BSPs we had in place in level 2. I began by going though every puzzle we had in our level 2 kids room.  I used a unreal market place pack called SuperGrid, Which can be found using the link below.

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/supergrid-starter-pack

Using this pack, I replaced our walls and environments to look better and have fit our theme more.  After this, I began work to make our puzzles have proper starts and endings. I changed our chest code from being number based to shape based to fit our original vision. I made the teddy bear puzzle allow access into the crib and had the cooking puzzle properly open the stove door. I made the piano puzzle spawn one of the blocks necessary for the combo as well. After this, I began recreating our chest mesh to allow for an inside section within it. Once this was finished, I added an interactable to unlock the grapple. After this, with help from fellow developer Ethan Ortega, we worked on changing the living room area with our enemy to feel closer to our original vision. After Finishing up all the techinal aspects of it, I began work adding in captions into our levels to help give hints to our player on what to do. 

With these changes, Shutdown began to feel more like a game. We still have a lot to go with our levels but the flow has began to come together. 

Before Images:

After Images:

- Christian Ortiz, VECCA Dev