Moving on from the tutorial; questions.

And with that, I think we're Done Enough with the tutorial area.

I've heard a lot of feedback about it so there were a lot of affordances that would help. I've added a bunch; no doubt there could still be more. But given that this is a fraction of the gameplay but a huge amount of the codebase -- and the replayability is necessarily limited! -- I think it's time to move on to more content so that (, once you're hooked) you have something with which to engage.

The open areas as we go into a wider release:

1. More content (wide). The level select screen is a bit lonely and needs more. The planned area -- where I'm working *right now* -- is Tapir Wharf, a sort of coney island funhouse area. Ultimately seven is a pretty cozy number to aim for; I got plans.
I'm considering adding more rooms to each existing level too but ultimately that's backburner unless I hear from you the playerbase. I think each level needs a certain number of "screens" of useful content as you scroll around. The train/station/platform level is hitting my target number of screens. Enough? Too much?

2. More content (deep). We need more deviations within the areas that already exist, and they need to be more satisfying. Some are still too subtle. Some are not fun. There's just not enough to avoid repetition yet. And of the challenges that exist, their difficulties can vary wildly. This is actually reasonably straightforward to do, so I'm hopeful I can deliver here continuously.

3. Better integration of the technobabble themes. I like the idea of reporting a horrifying alien as an exoagonist. But how do I teach the player the difference between that and a bioentropic corpse? What would make this feel better? One obvious thing is that right now I'm stuck between MSDOS and Win95 in the theming. I know that I both 1. need to pick one and 2. know which one I want to pick (MSDOS!), but this is a relatively low-reward slog so I'm putting it off. The facelift is coming though.

4. More juice (everywhere). We need more sensible sounds and better level mixing. We need more little animations for things that need to work (looking at you, legally-distinct-from-grand-central janitors in your t-poses). I should stop using 3d sprites in places I really need a cool monster, but render the cool monster (this dummy art is a way of building up my abilities over time until I'm ready for this). People have faces, man, and this crash test dummy look is only going to get you so far. Animation timings are sloppy. Etc, etc.

5. More gameplay twists. I want an ongoing hint mode that helps focus attention in subtle and not so subtle ways as you play. I want memetic scrawl in the corners of the screen. I want scenes where you have to interact with things. I want haunts that chase you through the minimap, that warp the screen, that glitch mouse movement.

Then of course there is infrastructure:

0. Chasing down #$%$#%ing captive mouse issues; rendering issues; general engine bugs. Let's say this is an area rife with traps and no more. Focusing on desktop install (the much more well-lit path) will hopefully help.

1. Packaging the levels so that they can be separately distributed. In addition to making the enormous web startup delay that much more sprightly, it will hopefully improve caching and continuous delivery as we move towards...

2. Mobile (& desktop install). Which means new interaction modes (probably two finger swipe to minimap navigate, but I do have to build it), as well as platform installs for mac & win & linux. Critical for permanent install.

What do you think? Let me know!