Muyscamuy DX released, and our selection as Finalists for the jam

A new version of Muyscamuy is released! You can play online at https://slash.itch.io/muyscamuy. Don’t forget to go full-screen using the lower-right corner button!

This is v0.9, the first one after the CHGJ. Here are some of the things we have done:

First off, the most visible change is the Full HD mode, this is something I should have done for the jam version, but mistakenly thought it would go against the accessibility of the web build and make it harder for the jurors to check out the game 🤦 in the end I think it worked in detriment to the experience and perceived production values of the entry. You never stop learning. (then again, this was my first Unity WebGL project so I guess I can be more forgiving with myself)

Second, the game is now multilanguage with a Spanish translation, which means it will now be enjoyable for a much bigger audience (in Colombia mainly)! Using Unity’s localization tool was an interesting experience. Took a bit to set it up but in the end, it was worth it to easily push and pull from Google Sheets and keep the strings sync easily with the rest of the team.

There was a lot of Content work beyond (and in constant interaction) with the translation; we did a complete pass over all the game text revisiting it under the lenses of the Muisca culture, adding many more words in the Muisca language of Bogotá (Muysccubun) to the in-game dictionary (accessible via the tooltips in the game events). Great work by Esteban and Manuel.

Also worked on improving the visuals of the game along with David, including a visual for deforested land, building in progress, a building for the depot where the villagers store the food, fixing the placement of the workers in the fields to accommodate for the isometric perspective, adjusting their scale, and displaying them in different jobs. We still want to improve how farms are displayed.

Improving the user experience was another thing we put a lot of work on, making the UI more readable and reorganizing the UI. It’s an ongoing effort. We still haven’t added proper nice visual UI elements to the game.

QuietGecko also put a bunch of work in the audio, adding a lot of UI SFX, improving ambient sounds, splitting SFX in different buses, and doing several mix passes.

I think that’s it for now! there are some things I didn’t manage to include in this version, but we wanted to put it out there (especially because of the HD visuals and the Spanish translation!) for people to enjoy it.

Also, the winners of the Cultural Heritage Game Jam have been announced! you can check them out in this collection I created. We managed to get selected as one of the 12 finalists of the jam, but I still think our greatest achievement was to be able to create this and share with people that really value the Muisca culture being represented in this media, for people of all ages and places to be able to learn about it.

The story of Muyscamuy continues, subscribe to the blog and follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss this epic adventure!