Farming at the End of the World Version 0.0.2

Farming at the End of the World

Jam Results

Super excited that Farming at the End of the World won second place in the horror category for Themed Horror Game Jam #9. While we came in 13th place overall, the horror elements of the game were the primary focus of mine during the planning, development and testing of the game. 

Now that the game jam is over I am able to start making regular updates on the game.

There was a video uploaded by another jam contestant that detailed a few of the current issues with the game that need solving (difficult gameplay loop, frustrating mouse sensitivity and etc)

The video is great and can be found here: 

Fixes in This Update

This update (Version 0.0.2) adds a few new quality of life features to the game. 

1. A Main Menu that displays on startup, rather than dumping the player directly into the action. This menu also lists all the bug fixes and new features in each update on the right side of the screen
2. A fix to the restart bug, this issue previously caused the map to disappear each time the player restarted the game. This was caused by the death screen implementing a pause, now the main level auto unpauses the game in the ready function, preventing any similar bugs from occurring
3. I added a second lantern to the attic, this way the player can juggle between two lanterns and a bucket, this makes completing the current objectives much easier and also lead to some forced code improvements in how I create and place farm tools in the level
4. Nav Mesh fixes ensure mutants appear a bit closer to the ground so they have less of a floaty movement pattern
5. I also decreased the distance mutants can attack from to prevent them from killing the player from a far distance. Mutants have to get .5 meters closer than they previously did in order to kill the player.
6. I added a settings menu with sliders to control volume and mouse sensitivity so that the game can be played in a more comfortable way
7. I've changed the windows export settings to include an embedded PCK

What's Coming Next?

Quality of Life Fixes

- Controller support is on its way

- SFX and Music will be separated to two separate audio channels, allowing players to control the volume of things like footsteps, gunshots and music individually

- Sloped colliders will be added to reduce the amount of times players get stuck on things like stairs

Gameplay Fixes

- For update 0.0.3, I'll be focusing on improving the enemy AI so that player detection only occurs when there is a direct line of sight on the player or when the player makes a large noise (shooting)

- Prior to the next update, I would like to add one additional task to the gameplay loop. Likely the addition of a hoe to be used for weeding hidden in a creepy shack closer to the woods. This should vary up the gameplay a little bit and improve the current slice of gameplay.