Last week I had a chance to show my upcoming game at a pre-PAX party among various game devs in a chill clubby atmosphere. Also, free beer and pizza!
Aside from my previous games, I showcased HEADLINERS, a game where you curate newspapers to shape public opinion. Even though I was only able to show the very incomplete office scene sections, I got some valuable feedback I’m already incorporating :) Here’s a refresher of what it looks like thus far and the top things I learned:
Players missed the sticky notes, they just flat out didn’t read them.
I should highlight them initially as they contain important info
Players did not realize how to zoom in newspaper
Just lack of tutorial, nothing I wasn’t planning to implement already :)
Wording on first article (celebration etc.) suggested it was putting modified in favorable light even though it was supposed to be objective.
This is actually a very important lesson for all my writing so I picked the fellow devs quite a bit on this issue, learning a lot!
Players did not understand their role
The player asked: “what is my stake in the company? Am I a shareholder? Do I care about ratings?”
While I do plan on implementing an intro of some sort, I realized I will have to put more thought into it. Purely communicating the idea did not quite grab or clarify things to the player, so I’ll need to think about how to really draw them in and make them feel engaged.
My last game, Gather, suffered from lack of player motivation so I need to be careful not to repeat the same mistake!
Player thought his job was to correct mistakes not shape opinion
This is an important distinction I need to make clearer. It’s not like Papers, Please where you scan for discrepancies.
That’s it for now :) It was but a tiny slice of still pre-alpha game, but already gave me tons of important feedback. So the gamaedev lesson here is – start testing as early as you can. Yes, even earlier than that!
Also, big big thanks to Patrick and CJ from Galvanic Games for taking the time to test my game and provide a lot of in-depth feedback! Check out their last game, Gurgamoth!
Cheers,
Koob