Week #11 - The Playtest Is Out There!
So this last Thursday the second playtest was sent out the those that signed up, and so far I've received feedback from 11 individuals (with some more coming hopefully in the next few days).
So let me summaries the results as of now (if you got the playtest and just didn't play/give feedback on it yet, do it before continue reading!)
Overall the experience is way better. The added narrative is working, but it needs to better hook the player in from the start.
The pacing is working, but people would like to roam more freely to make the story more their own.
The game is FAR from polished, and it is something everybody feel.
People that already played the game wish that the puzzles would be more fun to execute, and maybe to be able to give themselves added challenge.
The characters are fun, but they do need more work to really shine.
Of course there are other things, but so far these are "The Big Ones". I wish to address all of them at least in some ways in the next playtest (which I hope to do in a month or two max).
One of the things I've tried to work on these last two days was to create an environment for the school. The main idea that I had was that the school should be centered around a huge tree. From there I decided to look at a lot of bonsai photos and... well, here is what I came up with in the meantime:
It still is very much a work in progress, but I wish to hear your opinion on it.
Basically, the school will mostly be on the tree itself, on the lower tree (Which is black right now for no reason) there will be the dorms. The rest of it is places around school that are still part of the school property (and narrative).
I thought up other stuff as well such as how fast travel will work in this environment, and other cool stuff - but everything at it's time.
Thank you everybody that signed up for the playtest and played, I could have never reach even this far without you!
And everybody, I want to try something new, please tell me what you would like to see / hear from me on these blogs posts.
Reach out to me and say what is the most interesting thing for you, and I'll try to touch on it as much as I can on future posts.
See ya next week (: