Hi there!

It's us again, the Fare Exchange development team. For the very last time. This project has at last come to an end. The final version of our game is available now for everyone to download.

Our last week was filled with little tweaks, last minute bug fixes and polishing the visuals just that little bit more.

We made a whole pitch presentation and trailer to present at our school, and that took a whole lot of work as well. The trailer should be viewable to you all as well.

Art

The last few weeks were intense but incredibly fun. We poured all our energy into making sure everything looks fantastic for you. 

Our aim for this last (half) week was to present everything clearly and beautifully, so that you and your friends can fully immerse yourselves in playing our game.

We did some polish on lighting, added some fog and environmental dust particles.

We updated the textures and model of our boat and added some glowing lanterns.

We added some polish to our start screen. Adding props, a polished logo and some characters standing and moving around.

We added some chromatic aberration when the boat gets hit:

Programming

Hey everyone! We're at the end of the polish sprint, hunting down bugs, tweaking numbers, and making the gameplay smoother than the River Styx itself.

First up, we made sure the enemies scale better depending on how many brave souls are on board. No more getting overwhelmed by a skeleton army just because you brought a friend!

We also tackled some wonky collisions and made the skeletons and player animations a lot clearer. Now you can enjoy smoother combat and see those bony baddies in all their glory.

Speaking of spooky stuff, we noticed dust particles were spawning out of nowhere, just like in real life! But don't worry, we've sorted that out so your vision won't be clouded by phantom dust.

One big thing we fixed was the stun effect. When you got hit before, it didn't do much—those skeletons were just showing off! Now, getting stunned feels like it should, adding more challenge to your undead encounters.

During testing, we found a bug where if multiple players died, the first one couldn’t respawn, leading to a permanent death situation. While that could be an intense difficulty setting for the future, it wasn’t what we intended for now. So, rest easy knowing you can die happy and still come back for more!

Sound

We focused mainly on creating a solid mix structure using submixes.

We added a characteristic Bouzouki lick at the end when our players win, and very dramatic SFX accompanied by a huge splash when they lose.

We also included some dynamic layers that are triggered only when enemies are on the boat. This includes some percussion and, in addition, our sound designer grabbed his electric guitar and recorded some palm-muted chords that are triggered when players reach 60% of progress and open chords when they reach 85% (but again, only when enemies are onboard), all with the objective of adding drama and scaling gameplay intensity!

What's next?

We did our very best to make this game something worthy and we hope you guys will truly enjoy the game. During the process, we had to cut a lot of features, but we always tried to keep the core of the game fun and engaging. We are, of course, always open to feedback and finding ways to improve. So feel free to leave us a comment letting us know what you guys think.

Maybe until next time! 

The Fare Exchange Team