Play Testing So Far...

So far so good with play testing.  I've gotten some positive responses around gameplay and presentation.  I've also gotten some good suggestions for things that could be done to improve.  Here's a few:

• Gamefarm commented that the backgrounds were a little too busy and suggested I darken them up and make them a little out of focus.  I was skeptical how much of an effect this would have but since it wasn't going to take much time I gave it a try and I'm glad I did.  I darkened most of the images by 20% and added a 2 pixel blur and thought it turned out pretty cool.
• Gamefarm also was annoyed that the long teleporters were too much of a penalty because the timer was running while the camera tracked back to your new location.  I paused the timer during teleporting and I agree, this feels better.
• Obskewer games suggested adding something that explains the purpose of the power ups.  In the current version in test the game just plays a sound and subtracts time from your score.  Based on this comment, I added some text that floats up and fades out displaying the # of seconds that was subtracted.  I think this provides good feedback to the player.  Thanks @ObSkewerGames!

But... I did some more testing on my Xbox to prepare for peer review and found a crashing error that occurs when playing in a language that does not use the period as a decimal separator.  The problem occurs because both my config file and the high scores file store durations accurate to 1000th of a second using the period for the decimal point.  As a code change, it's not huge.  The challenge will be making sure I get it fixed in all the appropriate places.

That's what's happening.  Until next time, here's a screen shot.