July Development Update
This monthly development update is later than normal as today officially marks one year since the start of the Nestables pre-sale, so we thought it would be time for a very special development update with a big announcement.
Development Progress
Improved UI
One area that we always wanted to improve was the UI for Nestables. Intuitive UI for any game is critical and now that we have been able to sit down and play it, you can start to see areas that were missing, options that would be useful and parts of the gameplay that could be explained better to players.
The new UI brings a splash of colour to the game, making it visually more attractive and should mean that many of the systems are more straightforward for users to interact with and understand.
A New Plumbob
We have also implemented this month a new plumbob. The colour of the plumbob will represent the happiness rating of the Cube to give players a simple visual cue. Importantly, it also works with the game much better than the old plumbob (pictured below)!
Other Development Progress
Audio integration for the game is now complete! This has certainly added another level of depth to the gameplay, bringing many of the Cube’s activities and interactions to life. The rest of our time has been spent internally testing the game, working on balancing and fixing bugs / tweaking gameplay.
Other usability improvements from our internal testing have also been added to the game, such as being able to make multiple of the same recipe in one hit.
Nestables Alpha
Balancing gameplay aspects is both critical and difficult for Nestables as we recognise that people will want to play the game in different ways and for different reasons. To this extent, we thought it was time to look at involving you in our testing. Afterall, we have always intended to build a game with you, our community.
At this stage we are on track for a pre-alpha on the 27th of August. This pre-alpha will be open to anyone who holds a Nestables Founder’s Token and has a cube from our pre-sale.
A version of the game will be downloadable via the website where players will be able to login to their Nestables account. This will then verify that the user holds a Founder’s Token in their wallet. From here, you will be able to choose which Cube that you would like to play the game with.
The purpose of this pre-alpha is:
- To give the community an early look at Nestables — are we on the right track? Do you like the graphics, the UI?
- Help us with balancing — are some aspects of the gameplay too slow or too fast? Are other aspects too overpowered or not rewarding enough from the effort you and your Cube have put in?
- What do you think of the game audio and music?
Essentially, we thought it was time that we got more external feedback on our development progress for Nestables. There is still a considerable amount of work to be done on the game, in particular adding more tasks, activities and content to the current gameplay. There is however, enough content for the community to let us know if we are still on the right track.
More info on this pre-alpha will be included in an upcoming Medium post closer to the date.
