We've finally reached the finish line and created a final build for Play NYC 2022! Between the 4th deliverable and the final build, we swapped a lot of art assets that really brought the game to the next level, the most important ones being: the workshop, the grass blades and grass texture and Abuelito's house. We also brightened the textures of a few assets that were weighing down the map and added more details to the terrain for variety. All these changes made a HUGE difference in the game's look and feel. 

Between these images, you can notice a significant change in lighting and style. That's because we changed our skybox and tweaked around a few lighting assets to brighten up the day time scene. This new skybox also had a beautiful night swap that included moonlight and variables to add fog and rays of moonlight. It really elevated our night time sequence!

We also finished integrating all the options and UI art for the mask crafting screen, which took a lot longer than we were expecting. To complicate things, we chose to use controller input for the show, to make the game more accessible for people at Play NYC but that decision did bite us in the ass. Configuring input for a controller while trying to make the user interface easy to understand but also contain all the options needed was a tough challenge to figure out. We eventually want to update the mask crafting UI to have an in-game cursor that will make it easier to move around options. 

For this final build, we finished integrating the music and audio for interactions in the game including: mask crafting options, picking up items, shooing the spirits, and the day/night musical theme and ambient change. 

Overall, we are so happy and proud of how far we were able to take Vejigantes. We poured a lot of passion, love and soul into making this game a true representation the Puerto Rican culture and countryside with a fantastical twist.

Play NYC was a huge success for us and we really had a blast. We got nothing but incredibly positive feedback and heard things like 'this is gorgeous', 'the game is fun', and my personal favorite 'you are making Puerto Rican Legend of Zelda.' I think we are onto something special here and hope to keep expanding on the game in the near future. For now, we're happy to take a well deserved rest.

Here are some of the masks that we saved from the event! We had 78 in total but here are 40 of them. It was a beautiful thing to share my culture with so many people. Thanks for reading!