Keeper Sprint 6: A Brave New World

The environment has evolved drastically since the last sketches I showed. We now have several key pieces modeled by our environment artist that will eventually become in-game platforming levels for me to test and iterate on.

Here are the changes to both our main character, Sprout, as well as the overall environment. Note the changes to the stonewall and tree, as well as the addition of the pond and well. Finally we defined the limits of the playspace by surrounding it with bushes and will later not allow the player to cross over them.

Wildflowers now populate the world as well! As a natural gardener, you will collect their seeds to plant them in dirt mounds where they will grow gradually. Flowers can be harvested by holding Y on the controller when near them. We decided it was more clear for players if we put the button prompt over the flower within the game space rather than on the screen's 2D plane like how most UI is done. This gives us a nice relationship between the action the player is committing and the expected feedback represented by said action.

I have also been hosting QA sessions once every week, and have received a steady flow of feedback which I will incorporate into the next iteration of the game. Lately our focus has been on usability, as many players required a lengthy explanation of what was happening when they performed gardening actions. In our most recent session however, I put the players in the game for a limited time and no explanation, and later asked them in their feedback forms to check which mechanics they discovered. Encouragingly, most players discovered every mechanic.