It's almost over, can you believe that? We've had a crazy ride and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for sticking by. Through thick and thin, through the awkward ragdoll going crazy stage, from the capsules in the prototype to our little bouncy carrot lads, this has truly been a journey. 

All that being said, we're still polishing! It's a bit of a back and forth since there's been an official lock on new features. That means that we cannot add anything new gameplay wise, just gotta make what's already in shine.

And shine it will

Alina has been going over the UI making everything pretty. After some feedback and some shuffling some menus around, we're pretty happy with what we got in the end.

A particularly funny bit of feedback for the old start screen was that people thought the game was called 'PLAY', since we may have omitted a title banner... oopsie?

Anyways, we're sad to announce that though "PLAY" is a pretty cool title, our game is in fact still called "HOT POTATO"!

Particles particles particles..... and.... sounds?

To be honest a lot of the work for this sprint amounts to "OH that could use a particle!" and "OH wouldn't it be cool if the carrot screamed in agony as he gets thrown halfway across the map?". So while Alina has their work cut out with the menus and UI, the rest of the art team is... well... making particles!

A bit of feedback we received was that it was difficult to aim the throwable objects. We tossed around a bunch of ideas but short of aim assist we didn't know how to make it easier, because it's supposed to be a bit challenging. We also didn't want to make the hitboxes bigger because we thought that it might be a tad confusing. Someone suggested maybe a pointer, showing which way the character is facing to make it easier to know where you're throwin' , so we did that.

We've also polished some of the existing particles and added a couple of new ones, such as a little confetti shower for the winning carrot. And as much as the sparks fountain in the bomb particle will forever hold a special place in our hearts, it sadly had to go. Polish was the perfect time to give it some extra love and now it looks a little bit nicer and less, well, aggressive.

Compromised by bugs...

The programmers had their work for them cut out as they went about to slay the mythical creatures that are bugs!! The hardest part of bug fixing is trying to find them, its not always easy to replicate a bug so playtesting was our best option! With the playtest we noticed a few bugs and squished them. Some more noticeable ones were the menu breaking if you spam pressed buttons and players getting stuck inside the level at random occasions. These bugs should be fixed now but as any good developer knows bugs like to hide themselves really well, so we are still on the lookout.

Some serious feedback!

Yes we received some serious feedback, mostly serious when it comes to quantity, but it gave us a lot to think about for our game. We feel like we have chosen some of the feedback to implement that will make our game feel and perform better, so thanks to all or play testers for that! Speaking of feedback...

Are you ready to rumbleeeee?

Haptic feedback was introduced into the game! You should start feeling some of that serious feedback we got in your hands now for example when you explode or when the bomb is beeping in your hands telling you to get rid of it, fast! On top of that your controller isn't the only thing rumbling now as the camera has decided to try and break free from it's virtual reality and is shaking violently when the bomb explodes for our immersion.

So whats for dessert !?

This is one of our last devlogs, its been a very fun ride and everyone on the team enjoyed working on this lovely project. Although we had some ups and downs I think we can be very proud of what we made, hopefully you agree! Our final week will be spent finalizing everything and ironing out the last few bugs. Anyway that's it folks, save some space because next weeks devlog is the final one and we all know you end with dessert!