Celestial Rabbit 1.1 Update

An update for Celestial Rabbit is now available on the App Store, adding 3 different skill levels for players to choose from, as well as a few game play tweaks.

The difficulty of the original version was by far the greatest feedback that we received and observed, although most people were really nice about it. Therefore, we decided to focus primarily on balancing the game play first, before adding any other features in future updates.

Instead of just replicating the points in the “What’s New in this version” section from the iTunes page, I’ll go into a bit of detail in this development blog to describe how we addressed those issues from a more technical perspective for those who are interested in game design and development.

Here’s what we did:

• A number of people found it hard to make out the rabbit and the clouds visually, so we added some tinting to the rabbit and the clouds to make them stand out more against the background, while keeping it true to the art style.
• It wasn’t always clear to new players how to control the rabbit since the “Tilt to move rabbit” instructions were only displayed once, so we replaced the “Prepare yourself, little rabbit” message with the “Tilt to move rabbit” text so that it appears before every game. (Thanks, Susanne!)
• Fixed the sideways drifting of the rabbit by applying a sensitivity curve to the input data from the accelerometer, so that you have finer control with small movements, but greater range with larger movements. This reduces drift but allows the rabbit to jump further sideways.
• Increased the jumping height of the rabbit to 2 levels of clouds to provide a greater sense of movement.
• Changed the cloud, coin, and red packet generation algorithm to provide a more gradual increase in challenge based on your current skill. This also fixes the problem where you sometimes get stuck because you can’t reach a higher cloud.
• At Easy level, the rabbit is positioned in the lower third of the screen, and the flow speed is reduced, to give you more time to anticipate oncoming coins and red packets. Clouds that you have passed also stay around a bit longer to provide a safety net in case bunny should fall. This should provide a greater sense of control instead of luck, while being more forgiving.
• At Normal level, the rabbit is in the lower third of the screen, and the flow speed is only slightly reduced. This should provide a balance between control and challenge.
• At Expert level, the rabbit is in the upper third of the screen, and the flow speed is the same as before. With the other game play changes described above, this skill level provides the greatest challenge and perhaps a greater sense of luck vs control, but it still depends on your skill in the game to control the challenge.

So, get the update and let us know how it plays for you.