Introducing.... SOUND!

Big news as we near a new demo release leading up to NarraScope on June 21st: We have SOUND and MUSIC!

I'm so thrilled to announce that Ethan Desautels (aka DonutShoes) will be scoring and providing the SFX work for Bundle of Joy. I'm beyond excited by the work he's already shared with me, so go check out this music teaser to see what he's cooking up (itch.io I so wish you'd allow for audio embed!!!).

It's been amazing working with Ethan. His incredible talent will elevate the entire BoJ experience in order of untold magnitudes. This news means I'm integrating WWise into the project for some lightweight parametric sound control/design. A lot of this will have to do with how the soundtrack will transition between different gameplay segments, but who knows, it might come in handy for all sorts of things that Godot's OOTB audio streaming nodes can't handle (though I'm very proud of the lil' programming module/singleton I created for handling what sound gets played when you complete a minigame).

In other, non-audio news, I've been working on a lot of quality-of-life issues with the game including reconfiguring the camera rig and standardizing scale between scenes to make some of the shader effects a bit more consistent. This new rig also comes with a "stress effect" based on the current level of stress you're feeling in each minigame. This is broken down into three tiers: no stress, some stress, and lots of stress. When each tier above no stress is triggered, it activates a visual cue that you're starting to stress out while also initializing a camera shake script (as depicted below).

I incorporated this into the project after some excellent feedback from folks at Wonderville's playtest night. Amongst some of the feedback I got was about the ending sequence and clarifying what it means to write in your parenting journal. One playtester said it might be more helpful to be reminded of how your day went if you provided some "memories" of what you did. Although they initially thought of including snapshots of your day (an idea that I still love), I think instead I want to provide a "snapshot" of what you accomplished: number of minigames completed, final stress level, how many times you stressed out, and other yet-to-be-integrated features. I think capturing this day would give folks more "prompts" to reflect and would hopefully encourage them to trigger end-of-day feedback that encourages the player to use positive self-talk.

Otherwise, minigame development is moving along somewhat slower than expected, but that's partially because of the bits of polish I wanted to integrate and other core game loop features still waiting to be completely implemented. But those will come in due time, and I've started to prototype three new minigames that I hope I can include in the new demo.

Thanks for tuning in and will be in touch before heading to NarraScope!