Initializing Update 1 of 1

In just a few hours, we here at Birnam Wood Games will be releasing Loc version 1.1!!!!

After, what we considered a successful launch, we sat back down and began to take a more critical look at Loc. In addition we received a very thorough outside critique when we took the game to the Vicarious Vision’s Student Competition at RPI in Troy New York, where we won first place.

So what exactly did we change?

Full Screen: Right off the bat you will notice that the game launches in Full Screen, something we had hesitated doing because of resolution worries. But the game now looks SO good in full screen. The black filling bars really add a bit more polish to the experience.

Sound: We made a few intelligent sound changes as well; the tile sliding is a little quieter, which is a good thing. It tended to be a bit irritating while playing with headphones on. But what is even better is that the tile sound only plays when you actually move the tile, it used to play continually when you were just clicking on tiles.

Art: While Loc is a very beautiful game it lacked motion, a pop if you will. Feedback to encourage the player is always something a design must incorporate and it was the one thing we missed. So now when a level is complete the stars have a pulse to them, and every time a player completes a section we have new animation which brings them out to the section select screen and shows an unlock animation. This design is supposed to help break up the game more and help show the player their progression throughout their experience.

Saving: When we launched Loc we did so with a bit of naivety when it came to Mac systems. Several people couldn’t play the game at all, which was a big shocker for us as we tested on a few Macs. The issue became where the save game was being created, and the differed between systems and even OS’s. We spent the last few weeks researching and creating a new method of saving which fixes all of these problems.

Every day we are learning by degrees, without having to worry about school and turning in those pesky Gen Ed papers we can actually focus on game development for a change. So we apologies for the delay in these important updates, but hope you enjoy the new polished Loc 1.1 experience.