His Master’s Voice

Two weeks ago, I talked about the triage we were performing on Beat Drop. A week later we re-evaluated the gameplay with all the planned additions. We still couldn’t find the fun in the systems we had built, so we started over again.

Third time’s the charm. I don’t want to give everything away but I can tell you Wub-Wub has been promoted to protagonist (pugtagonist?) and Oontz repurposed as our professor-in-peril: The Natives have captured Oontz, and it’s Wub-Wub to the Wescue.

We’ve managed to work in the theme in two ways. First, the rhythmic drumming of the Natives controls the appearance of platforms, arrows and boulders. Second, scattered throughout some of the levels are phonographs. Wub-Wub can learn the songs they play to slow down the Native’s drumming and charm unique wild life into helping him reach his goal.

Because we’re a man down and the prototyping phase took so long to bear fruit, we’re way behind where we would like to be. So we’re going to take another week or two to finish this one up. As all the main programming and art is done, we’ll be using this extra time to create a ton of levels that really explore the various mechanics and produce a game we can really be proud of.