In my last report, I replaced a bunch of placeholder art for my second Freshly Squeezed Entertainment project called Clown Alley Creator, a creativity tool about creating your own fun clowns.
I have continued to apply polish and respond to feedback from testers, and I am getting ready for the actual release!
Sprints 2024-30: Polish, Porting, and Publication Preparations
Completed:
- Update Android/iOS/Windows icons
- Ensure credits page is comprehensive
- Tester feedback: swap the confirmation buttons when naming a clown for consistency with all of the other buttons
- Center button in modal for exiting back to Gallery mode
- Update delete clown confirmation menu to look nicer
- Tester feedback: hard to tell what top-level creator mode menu currently on
I updated the app icons, mainly because what I had before was too garish. I ended up liking this one:
I got more feedback from more testers, so I made sure to add their names to the credits page, plus I made sure to give credit Kenney UI and Sound Rangers. It occurred to me that I should also give credit to game-icons.net. All of these helped make this game feel so much more polished and finished and less amateurish.
Much of the rest of the work involved minor polish, such as centering buttons or making things easier to read.
The biggest thing was something I’ve been meaning to address for a long time. I have some top-level navigation in the Creator Mode, but since I had cut quite a bit of scope, it really wasn’t necessary to have it.
I had two top-level navigation buttons, and despite testing this game for months, I still find myself confused or frustrated with being on the wrong menu without realizing it. That someone else was also frustrated by it was enough for me to finally make time to address it.
Before:
After:
Things feel so much smoother and clearer, especially now that the way to exit back to the gallery is a lot more called out by the top left button.
And another thing I finally addressed is a way to let players know that the make-up submenu has 4 layers to it. In-person testing has shown me multiple times that people just don’t realize that there are four separate layers to play with, so I’m hoping that providing these conspicuous numbers should help.
Much of the remaining work is related to porting to mobile and desktop platforms and creating store pages. Assuming nothing surprising happens with Apple and Google’s review process, I expect you’ll be able to make your own clowns by the end of June!
Thanks for reading, and stay curious!
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