Sprint 4 (Feb 02 - Feb 06, 2026)
Prototype/Minimum Viable Product Week!
Sprint #4 2/2-2/6 - Prototype/Minimum Viable Product Week!
Production Goals for the Week:
| System Goals | Asset Goals | Documentation Goals | Playtesting Goals |
|---|---|---|---|
| All systems integrated | Art: Environment tiles done, architecture decor, environment backgrounds, post processing and lighting effects done, ice cube and claw animation done | Website set up done | External Playtesting: gameplay intuitive and immersive? narrative coherent? |
| Critical assets implemented | UI: all critical complete | ||
| Player locked in (only minor tweaks as necessary) | Writing: iterate on narrative & dialogue | ||
| Level design only tweaked to match player tweaks | Audio: music first draft, find all sounds | ||
| Design: first draft of cellar level | |||
| Marketing: finalize name of game |
With the goal of producing a minimum viable product (MVP) in mind, the team pushed really hard to complete as many tasks as possible. This week, we created break away platforms and level design zones (kill zones, and wind drain or gain zones) to create variety in level design. We also made a game state tracking script that utilizes flags to prevent repeat conversations and allow context-dependent changes to happen. In terms of design, we made significant progress on a ton of challenge rooms. We refined enemies, decided on exactly how the boss fight was going to work and landed on having the player regain health every time they enter a new room. Additionally, we scripted a cutscene, created a cutscene system that pauses player input, and added dialogue triggers for NPC interactions. We also integrated UI and menus with gameplay.
Along with all of the technical work, we made great strides in art as well. Because we received many art assets last week, we were able to start adding the rooms and room decor into the game. Our contractors were able to finish one of our enemy animations and most of the companion character animations which we then implemented along with a leaf poof particle effect. Our contractors started working on our antagonist animations and even finished character portraits for our protagonist and antagonist. They also made blur and rim light shaders to further enhance the background assets that we continue to receive.
In the audio space, we began hooking up audio in the engine. We finished the great hall music, and started drafting the level music which can now be assigned to their corresponding rooms using the music and ambiance managers that one of our contractors made. We saw our strong marketing efforts pay off when we held our first external playtesting session and had almost all of our available slots filled. We got a lot of valuable feedback from our playtesters that will likely influence how we continue in the coming weeks. Lastly, we finally landed on a name for the game and got a draft of our development website up and running on github pages (likely you are reading this post on said website!).
Check out the release from this week! Release 3
About Project Misfits
We are a team of students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute who are working to make a 2D puzzle platformer in just 8 weeks.