Vocab Sniper - Beta 11/20/23

Here's what's new for the Beta. Beyond this point, there won't be any major new features, just polishing and adjusting for the 1.0 drop on 11/27.

New Features

• Title screen. You can now select which language you want to study. It features Spanish, French and Icelandic. I also changed the word bank to feature some different words. 
• Results screen. You'll now get some feedback based on how well you did during gameplay! Your highest streak will give you some bonus points, but you'll also lose points depending on how many incorrect targets you've shot. I wanted to add this penalty since I removed the point penalty for shooting incorrect targets previously. My hope is that this further deters players from spam clicking targets and hoping for the best. The bonus and penalty value will probably need to be tweaked after Beta playtesting.
• Sound effects!!! Sounds are now present in the game, they'll help with feedback on shooting correct/incorrect targets, running out of time and getting all the targets wrong. I also added a fun little drumroll effect in the results screen just before your grade is revealed.
• Brief tutorial! Some players noted that they didn't know how to play the game so I added a brief five second tutorial to get you started. 

Balancing/Adjustments

• Gameplay
  • Increased time loss penalty for shooting an incorrect target from 1 -> 2.5
    • DEV NOTE: When you have an entire 10 seconds to answer, and shooting incorrectly only penalizes you by 1 second I felt that the penalty kind of loses it's value if it's not significant. This will probably be adjusted based on Beta playtesting.
  • Running out of time in a round now ends your streak
  • Increased point multiplier for streak system from 15 -> 20
    • DEV NOTE: I wanted to reward players a little more for their streaks rather than their time. This will probably also be adjusted based on Beta playtesting.
  • Fixed a bug where players could shoot incorrect targets after the correct one was selected
  • Time between rounds reduced from 1 second -> .6 seconds
    • DEV NOTE: Some players felt that the game was sluggish, so I reduced the amount of time between rounds so players can spend more time shooting than waiting.
  • Added a very small mount of time between the last round and transition to the results screen.

• Visuals
  • Adjusted color of the base of sprites to better match the grass color
  • Made the correct answer flash after running out of time/shooting all three incorrect targets more noticeable by increasing the size of the flashing text.
  • Incorrect targets now vanish when time runs out to help the player locate the correct answer