We submitted the game to IGF (Independent Game Festival) on October 31st. Attached to this post is the launch trailer and a screenshot of the game. It’s been a long road getting to this milestone, and there is plenty left to polish, but it definitely felt good submitting it to the festival! 
This moment is significant because it represents so far all the work that me and my team have accomplished. Though the game has changed in many forms since its conception, we’ve created a fun rails game that utilizes Kinect, is in line with our art theme, and is fun to play. Creating the game design has been invaluable experience for me, both in terms of gameplay and level considerations. I would say that we nailed down the Kinect movement mostly last semester and that this semester found me thinking about level design, obstacle and collectible placement. I had a lot of help from Anurag originally in regards to placement, but when we created the new area and track, I did the all the design of the level and obstacle/collectible placement.
We still have a lot of work to do towards EAE day – while this build represents a lot of the work that we have done, there is much more to be created:
Zodiac Trailer:
Areas of Focus Post-IGF
- Remastered level: Our level will feature elevations for EAE Open House. Currently, the playing field in this level is very flat. By adding elevations to the game we will be able to create new areas (valleys and mountains), which gives the player more rewards for traversing throughout the level. It’s a cheap way to add dynamics to the level. However, the challenge is that the engineers must build a track and tweak Anurag’s track tweener so that the animals movement on those elevated planes are smooth and not break the game. It creates a dependency, but I think it will be worth it when we finally achieve the result.
- We will be brightening up the color pallette- our game looks like it was constructed with dark construction paper, so we need to turn up the color value in a majority of our game’s assets right now. The characters need to be brighter, the landscape less dark, and it needs to be populated with more than just dark trees. The artists are aware of this and will be creating flowers and lighter textures for the animals and environments.
- I will be designing new maps that feature new gameplay areas – there will be mountains, valleys, and cliff areas. As mentioned, this will look nicer for the player. Also, it gives me more intent and purpose in designing these areas. Won’t it be nice for the player to ascend out of a canyon area into a beautiful grassland and then ascend into a snowy mountainous region? It gives the game more scale and adds to the magic of the Zodiac Race. Also, these hand-drawn maps serve as a good tool for the engineers to quickly place the track and also offer feedback when certain turns may create an issue for the player.
Josh Lee 