Our beta has been released around one week ago. We got a lot of positive feedback so far and the gamers enjoy to discover all the beautiful details in every particular map. As you might know, our game also contains a “Time Attack Mode”, where the player needs to beat the developers. For the beta, we have provided 3 ghosts for each map with varying difficulties, namely bronze, silver, and gold. Since we capture the trajectory of the spinship, the players can actually see their opponent. During the beta, our testers try to beat the ghosts we have captured.

And here comes the challenge: We also capture the spinships of our testers giving them the chance to replace our ghosts for the final game! We are not only taking the best ghosts, but rather keep care that they are “good” ghosts (the less wall hits, the better) which are good replacement for each skill level (bronze, silver, and gold). Our testers are so motivated, that we decided to prepare a web-widget, which not only shows the ranking, but also provides an interactive way to watch and inspect the trajectories of the other players!

For our blog, we have created a light version of the web-widget (see above), which does not reveal the player’s names and only contains maps 1 and 5 of each chapter (open the ranking by clicking on the upper left button). However, it is also live and instantly updated as long as the beta is ongoing! So whenever our testers have finished a map in the Time Attack Mode, you can have a look on the ghost they just created. Note, that we have highlighted our original ghosts in the ranking in yellow.

Since we only need to capture the attributes of the spinship, the schematic view of our web-widget only contains the static physical boundary of the map and the spinship. All other game elements like springs, pillows, or moving obstacles are not displayed. Don’t be confused, if a ghost in this schematic view seems to behave weird on large free areas. Most probably, the player just needed to avoid a moving element… or maybe the player is just crazy himself 🙂

You can also have a look on the distribution of finished maps in the Time Attack Mode, if you click the button in the upper right of the web-widget. Note, that the charts here contain all ghost data (including all 40 maps). Further note, that we will reveal the in-game graphics of the ghosts in our next episode.