Hello everyone and thank you for taking some time to have a look at the current state of our game ‘Deep Space Diner’. 

Our team has been extremely busy the past week so we haven't made any large updates to the game. However, I will go over the small changes that were made, the results of our playtest and the focus for the next few weeks.

Playtest

Firstly I'll discuss the playtest. The main thing we wanted to test out and see in action was the game loop and over all gameplay of the game. Luckily this went well as the feedback was that the controls were straight forward and intuitive. However, a bug was discovered during the playtest where once the plant was fully grown sometimes it would not reset the tile and new plants were unable to be grown on crop tile. This is currently being looked into by the programming team. The second most crucial piece of feedback referred to the growth stages. While the player could easily tell that the plant was growing over time as it changes in appearance there was no real indication for when the crop has reached its final stage and is ready for harvest. The suggestion made was to add particle effects to indicate that the plant is ready for harvest. Some minor feedback included updating the UI which has now been added to the game.

Programming Team

As stated the UI is now implemented in the game and looks like this.

While it still needs rescaling and touching up it is an improvement from the placeholder UI. 

The programming team has also added sounds to the game. This includes an audio clip for when the player plants seeds, harvests seeds, completes a dish and submits dish to the customer.

Art Team

The art team was helping with resizing and fixing up the UI so that it could work smoothly in the game. As well as that two new customers were designed for the game. A logo is also currently in progress.

What's Next?

The next big focus for the team includes the background map for the game which will consist of either tiles or one large background with only the farm plots being tiles. Furthermore, the economy of the game and a storage system will also be prominent aspects of the gameplay that we will be working on. The storage system is crucial so that the player will be able to store any unused crops for the next days orders. While the currency of the game is vital for purchasing new seeds and upgrades to the farm and cooking machine. 

This is all for now. Thank you for taking the time to read through.