Jumping Bllux - Update 1

Note: I had previously been posting these updates under the title “Eskape_project - update X”; but now that the game’s name has been revealed, I’ll be posting under the game’s name.

There has been a lot of progress on Jumping Bllux since the initial teaser trailer was posted a little over two weeks ago. The game has six more levels built and placed into the game, a UI system, sound effects, and even some music. The audio was created and placed into the game just this past week; and it adds so much to the game’s feel. It’s quite exciting.

I want to take a moment and talk about the importance of play testing. It sounds like such an obvious thing to do; have other people play your game; but just in the past two weeks play testing has had a drastic impact both on Jumping Bllux, and myself as a designer. Not only were troublesome areas of levels tweaked and modified to better fit players’ expectations, I’ve also found that the lessons learned from the necessary tweaks to existing levels are informing my design of new levels.

For example, I now know that when a player will be jumping a large gap, it is a very good idea to provide them a short wall to bounce against, so they can more easily come to a complete stop. I have also begun creating branching paths off of the main line through a level, with the branches being more difficult, but optional (each branch will need to be traversed if the player wants to collect everything in a level, but it is possible to complete a level without traversing all the branches).

As both a thanks to those that are following the game’s progress, and a small experiment; here is a Vine of gameplay from one of the levels created this week. The level’s working title is “Wall D”. (There is audio, you can turn it on by mousing over the video and clicking the unmute button in the top left corner)

(Please Note: this video is of a game that is in-development; which means anything may change at any time, and it does not necessarily reflect how the game will appear in its final form)