Hey, gamers!

This week, we are releasing the Beta version of Star Witch! We hope you enjoy it! Any feedback or bug reports would be greatly appreciated from the community, but please keep things kind and constructive, as we are a student studio and we are still new to game dev. We will do our best to address any issues for our Gold release next week. Now...on to the fun stuff!

What's New?

• Boss Fight! Take on the Chaos Witch, who has been wreaking havoc across the galaxy!
• New design for our cat sprites, now with a witch hat!
• The Arborian, Sandonian, and Cavernian musicians have been practicing and now play new music on their planets. Enjoy!
• Respawn checkpoints have been added, but watch out! These only work if you fall, not if you lose all of your hit points!
• Star Witch makes her internal thoughts known to help you on your journey.
• Star Witch can no longer spam her spells.
• Enemies are now animated.
• Hover over enemies with the mouse to see their health bar.
• Sound effects have been added.
• We have a trailer! Check it out on our homepage.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Jumping on rocks was frustrating for some last week...to a point of rage quitting. This has been fixed, so jump away!
  • Fireballs can no longer destroy other fireballs.
  • The levitation spell will no longer randomly kill pillbug enemies. They can’t be defeated that easily!
  • Running into a rock no longer causes player damage unless the rock is falling on the player.

What's the Motivation?
In the Beta release we introduced a third spell - the ability to transform into a cat - and it was a huge hit amongst our playtesters. We also got a lot of love for the tree puns on Arboria and the introduction of enemies. On the other hand, there were some issues with the rock platforms that made jumping on them a struggle for almost everyone. Their surfaces were uneven and jumping was not working consistently, but we’ve smoothed them all out. We also added the boss fight to conclude the game’s narrative and present players with a final challenge, which was missing from the previous iteration.

What's Next?
Star Witch is now content complete! At this point, we will primarily be making changes to fix found and reported bugs, polish up any rough edges, and respond to playtesting feedback. So please leave a comment below letting us know what you think of this Beta release!

On December 8th, Star Witch and the other EECS 494 games will be available at https://494showcase.com. Experience new student-made video games at the EECS 494 Virtual Games Showcase! Interact with the student developers, learn more about Michigan’s game development program, and vote for your favorite games! [Facebook Event] We hope to (virtually) see you there!

Ad astra,
Lunar Ladies Studio

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