The SmuggleStation

The Happy Badgers crew had quite the kickass time at PlayStation Expo! Over 500 gamers lined up to race Hovercrafts and the responses were overall positive! It was awesome watching players who’ve never seen SmuggleCraft before have a blast drift boosting past another racer. We attended PSX last year, but this year was a lot more fun and involved. A few players even recognized us from last year, and were highly impressed at the games status!

Ben speaking to some Gamers about SmuggleCraft

PSX was WAY busier than last year. The whole convention took place on a single floor, unlike last year where PSX took place on two. The single floor layout helped traffic for all the indie games immensely (though the AAA booth lines were ungodly long which also helpped), and it was easier to navigate around the con in general. By the end, we were suuuper tired. We were constantly on our feet and chatting with other devs and players, so the plane ride back was full of Zzz’s.

The indie games showcased at PSX were some top-notch games. Earthnight has been high on our radar for a while, and it was amazing seeing the game in action, but Battleshift Brigade took home the Happy Badger Best Indie Game of PSX award! Published by adult swim

A big shoutout to all who came by the SmuggleCraft booth! Your limited edition SmuggleCraft PlayStation Theme will be ready very soon! Stay tuned on our twitter page to know when we’ve smuggled the theme online.

People love SmuggleCraft!

“It was cool as fuck.” – Joey Paniello

Surprise stop at Disneyland!

Piecing it together

You know that feeling you get when you put on that pair of pants that hasn’t been worn for a while and find a glorious $20 bill in one of the pockets you completely forgot about? That’s what it feels like when we find part designs that we buried in the backburner a while back so we could focus on the more crucial parts of the game. Probably one of the most exciting parts about developing SmuggleCraft is creating the hovercraft parts (Fun Fact: the engine titled BHF9 stands for “Butt Hole Factor 9”). New parts have been finding their way into the game with every week, and we’ve even added some PlayStation exclusive engines for those who will be playing SmuggleCraft on the PlayStation 4!

The O engine making some noise.

The Porcupine Engine

Got any ideas for ship parts you’d like to see? Let us know below in the comments!

One of the key elements of Smugglecraft is the ability to build and customize your very own hovercraft. Every cockpit and every wing has a completely different effect on its overall stats, from the hovercrafts max speed to its ability to drag. Every area of interaction is important, from gameplay to start menu to the credits screen. As developers, we focus on interaction. How is interacting with our game fun, compelling, and exciting?

Ain’t she pretty?

This week, Joey completely revamped and rebuilt the Crafting UI from the ground up. After much play testing, we discovered that the original Crafting UI was a little confusing to the players. As game developers, player interactivity comes first, and if any area of the game we sense feels even slightly confusing, it is up to us to have the player be able to have an “Ah ha!” moment, rather than having decipher something that isn’t an in-game puzzle. We understand that sometimes, it can be hard to let go of something you worked so hard on (we spent many an hour building and designing the old Crafting UI). But in the end, we want to give the players the most immersive and smoothest experience as possible, and making the necessary adjustments, even if it takes some extra blood,sweat, and tears, is TOTALLY worth it.

In fact, building the new Crafting UI was pretty fun! It’s great overcoming challenges to help enhance the user experience. We
knew from playtests what resonated with players and what didn’t, so we built the new UI thinking about how to improve what players didn’t understand, while further enhancing the areas that they did. Joey had to math pretty hard to calculate move amounts for the inventory grid and when to move them properly, but the end result is pretty awesome. Theres even a new panel that allows the stats to be viewed on a pentagon grid (if you follow us on instagram, you got a sneak peak at this )!

The new and improved UI feels a lot better and looks snazzier. A huge thank you to the many play testers that helped us understand the Crafting UI better! We’re working hard to give you the best Smuggling experience as possible!

Stay tuned for my dev updates from your favorite indie dev, Happy Badgers Studios.