Welcome back fellow mountaineers.
We are happy to say that lots of work has been done and our Alpha for Ascent is looking great! We made a lot of improvements based on feedback we've received from playtesters and things are looking better than ever.

October 26: Mechanics Refinement and UI Improvements
- The yanking mechanic was refined so that the person who yanks is the yanker
- We also implemented a max distance to which yanking is allowed
- Our artist Moonho made a beautiful splash screen for the opening of our game

October 27: GDDC Playtesting
- The UofT Game Design and Development Club playtested our game and we received very valuable feedback:

• Throwing mechanic needs to be refined so that players are more prepared and have more feedback on when/where they will be thrown
• Yanks were inconsistent and unpredictable at times
• Co-op and aesthetics are our game's strengths
• The heights of our throws could be tweaked to be higher
• Communication was successfully achieved!
• Checkpoints and respawns should be more automatic/accessible
• Controllable camera

October 28-29: Camera and Gravity Tweaks
- We implemented a camera control with controller right-stick
- Jump mechanics were refined to be less punishing and feel better

October 30: Platform and UI Improvements
- Made scaffolding platforms transparent from the bottom
- Auto-respawn and more checkpoints implemented
- More visible UI changes (e.g. button hover, button select, etc.)

October 31: Mechanic Improvements
- Yanking mechanic made massive improvements based off of player feedback
- Parabolic shape that is more intuitive
- Works on all y-levels consistently
- Strength is more predictable and consistent no matter the distance between players

November 1: Level and Quality of Life Improvements
- Added a control map to our intro scene
- Connected the volume sliders in our settings menu
- Improved the level to make it fully playable and set up the structure for future levels

Next Steps:
- Adding in the wonderful art assets made by the art team!
- Implementing animations and more music/sfx
- Starting the first few playable versions of future levels
- Refining throwing and yanking even more to give greater feedback to players
- Introducing instructive signage for the tutorial segment of the first level (it flew to the wayside and we compensated with the control map for the Alpha version instead)