World Bub: Post-GGJ Updates

My brother and I revisited our Global Game Jam project, World Bub! We spent a couple of weekends after the GGJ was over to fix up some bugs, add some new art, and finish a few features we had originally planned.

 

💾 Download and play the game here:

 

Day 1

So I started out by fixing the key binds. The VisuStella Options plugin had the ability to rebind keys, and it ended up conflicting with our custom key binds, so I removed that feature and focused on the key binds we intended to get that working.

Then I updated the player and enemy turn visuals. They were previously overlapping some of the deck UI in a way that I didn't like much, so I updated it to cover less of that area.

I updated a few minor visuals like removing UI when it shouldn't be there or adding it when it should. Then I added a card visual for when you unlock new cards so you can more easily see which card you received and what it does.

Then I added more of the card abilities that we removed from the game initially. This included abilities like adding an extra move, attack boosts, defense boosts, etc. It ended up having me rethink how attacks were done so it could check for the boosts before a player or enemy attacks, to apply those to the damage.

When I was making the additional move, I also found a bug where you could infinitely move, so I ended up fixing that in addition to adding this new ability.

I updated the battles so that some enemies hurt more damage than others and they start in different locations depending on which rank they are. I didn't fully test these to ensure they're balanced, but I did at least start implementing this.

We originally wanted to implement characters on the maps so that you could talk to the characters you've defeated in one central area. I put in some placeholders and dialogue for when they talk to you. During this time, my brother was creating the final art for our overworld map and updating the lighting.

I added a bit more dialogue as well. I wanted to have different dialogue after you beat characters so they wouldn't repeat the same intro the second time you fight them.

Then I started to draw all of our character sprites. I made really simple animations for them and just created one direction for them to face so they could appear on the overworld and in one of the buildings as you collect them.

Day 2

On the second weekend, we finished everything up! I started with adding dialogue options where you can choose whether you want to battle a character or not, so you can back out if you change your mind. My brother made our show choices image and I made the functionality.

I also added the functionality for showing images when a location is locked and you can't progress yet to make that a bit more obvious. My brother did the visuals on this one as well.

Then I fixed some of our scrolling background issues and lights. The next area I updated was the randomization when you receive a card from beating Gair. There are 4 options so I previously just had it choose 1 randomly. I updated it to choose a new card each time until you have all 4 so it would be more worthwhile to challenge him to a rematch.

Then I implemented the types into the battle! We previously had types shown on the cards but they didn't actually do anything. So I changed it so all of the player's cards can damage the enemy for extra damage if they hit their weakness. I also updated the enemy's attacks to have a random chance that they'll do more damage to the player if they have an advantage to water (Piko's type). I added some flavor text to let you know if these are happening too.

I also created a visual in battle that shows the enemy's type so it's easier to remember what types you want to use against them. I was forgetting a few times in battle and wishing I remembered, so I thought this would be helpful for the player to use those type advantages more. My brother also updated the card layouts to include more symbols and visuals to indicate what cards are doing.

 Then I drew a few more character sprites! I drew Ducklin, Octobub, Octoglace, and Chilzby.

I updated the options screen to show the controls on it so it'd be easier to know which ones to use. I also fixed up some of the keyboard controls.

 

From there, I did some final testing and bug fixing. We were having a few bugs that would randomly happen, but they were really inconsistent and hard to recreate. So I tried to proof it up as much as I could, but it was a challenge to fully test when it was only happening once every ~10 playtests. And usually it would be when my brother was testing and not me, so it was hard for me to debug personally.

But overall, I'm really happy with the improvements we made to this game! This has turned out to be one of my favorite GGJ projects and maybe the most fun gameplay-focused one! I really enjoyed working on this project and I can't wait to see what's next!