Week 4 — Building and Shipping Whisker

The Whisker team at COSMOS — together on the day we shipped.

Monday — Polishing Core Gameplay

For the last week of COSMOS, cluster five focused on getting their final projects done. Monday was primarily a workday because most groups were still working hard to finish a prototype. I spent most of the day polishing and finishing the core gameplay mechanic. From a previous playtest, most testers found the pick-up mechanic very difficult because the pick-up radius of the player was too large. I also fixed issues like 2D sprites rotating unexpectedly and filled in missing narrative dialogues. The rest of the day was spent building out the remaining cooking levels.

Tuesday — Finishing Touches and Launch

I mainly worked on adding the finishing touches for a complete game. In the first half of class, I built a script for dialogue choices and imported the full seven-page script into the game. I finished by 2 PM, which made my group the first to have a complete prototype.

The only things remaining were sound effects and an ending scene image still being drawn. For the music, I chose classical music because it was high quality and copyright free. My teammate found nice sound effects and I rigged them up with a button UI script I had already written. After class, I committed the code and published the game on itch.io.

Wednesday & Thursday — Polishing and Presentation Prep

For Wednesday and Thursday, we mainly worked on polishing the game. We ran a couple of additional playtests and made minor improvements, but the prototype was essentially finished. We worked hard to set up our itch page and prepare for our final day presentation.

Friday — Showcase Day

We presented our games during class, which were met with applause and praise from students and teaching staff alike. During the afternoon, we got to showcase our projects to other students at COSMOS. We kept a notebook for feedback and presented to excited COSMOS students throughout the afternoon.

I would like to thank all of the teaching staff, RAs, cluster fellows, and fellow clustermates for an amazing month at COSMOS! Whisker is published on itch.io!

Working through a build session during Week 4.