Latest developments + GDC!

As promised in our last post about galactic cat AI goodness, we have some news we want to share with you.

What we have been up to

For the past two weeks among other things we have been:

• Improving the performance and stability of Ganbatte

Good performance improves the experience as a whole and minimizes VR sickness effects.

• Continuing to pursue the AI behaviour roadmap.

We have been mainly tackling Waving at Player and Expressing hand choreography points (AI Behaviour Roadmap). This has been a pretty interesting experience involving a little bit of DIY mocap (motion capture) at the studio.

We got crafty during a mocap session for Ganbatte’s AI bots. After so many hours of regular Vive usage, there’s something really funny about strapping @htcvive to your hands. ?#indiedev #gamedev #VR pic.twitter.com/EY46NZSW1Q

— Mimicry (@MimicryGames) February 27, 2018

 

• PLAYTESTING!!

Playtesting is super important. We’ve gone through two full days of playtesting. Unfortunately, we were so caught up in the process that we forgot to take photos.

• Improving the tutorial

One thing that became clear from testing very intensively is that our tutorial should be kid-friendly, and by this, I mean more pictures less text.

Artur Gomes and Pedro Oliveira have been doing a great job in polishing the tutorial, and  I’m sure we’ll be detailing the evolution in a near future. If you’re curious to see the first stages of the tutorial, check out Creating the tutorial part 1 

• Menu and UI’s

The menu and the UI have been under constant improvement. New graphics, improved UX, new environments. We can’t wait to share the new looks!

We’re going to GDC 2018

Our hearts skipped a beat some weeks ago when we received a confirmation that we were selected to be a part of the European Games Showcase at GDC 2018 (https://soops.net/selected-games-european-game-showcase-2018/).

The Game Developers Conference is the most well-known conference for the video games industry and we’re thrilled to showcase our game during this week and meet the press, potential partners and other fellow game developers.

If you’re attending GDC 2018 and you want to meet us, reach out on our social media channels or the Mimicry’s Contact page 

Wrap-up

Regarding Ganbatte’s development, our week in San Francisco for GDC 2018 means that we’re focusing a lot on the single player aspect of Ganbatte. Exhibition space and logistics play a huge role in the type of setup we can show.

Our chosen showcase set-up consists in showcasing a single player experience that enables the player to have a good grasp of the game. Hence, our obsession with having a compelling AI onboard.

Meanwhile, get ready to follow our steps during GDC on our social media channels. I’ll close off by reminding you that Ganbatte is now set to “Coming soon” on Steam at http://store.steampowered.com/app/691680/Ganbatte/. So, you can now wishlist it! If you want to ?

Thanks for reading!

-Daniela