Playtesting and debugging

Finally, the playtesting phase for the upcoming demo started. There were several playtest sessions, some of them in person, with good old friends, some of them remote.

These sessions were really useful to detect some level design issues, along with some serious balance problems with the miniboss of Area 3. There will be more sessions later on, but for now I've been fixing most of the recently found issues.

There were a couple dozen bugs that appeared because of the new control options, too. Even if they're pretty solid there were a couple of minor bugs here and there that went by undetected until now.



I also spent plenty of time on sound design of existing objects. There are new ambient noises in certain rooms, along with dedicated impact and death sounds for robotic enemies.



Al that's left to round up the contents of the upcoming demo is:

- Finish and balance the miniboss

- Finish the music tracks of the new areas

- Test and polish everything



This was a lengthy process, but right now the priority is to have, on release day, a very solid and polished game. As there's more content on each demo, the production and polishing process takes longer each time.

Scripting wise, this new area was the most complex so far. Hopefully the rest of the areas will be relatively simple to finish and test, compared to this one.



If everything goes well the new demo should be out in 3 or 4 weeks.

Until then, I recommend that you play the original Metroid 2, and get a feel of the third area.

As always, comments and ideas are welcome.