6 things users and testers said that are making our games better

Hi, my name is Ten, I’m the developer of Hyakuten Games. Whilst at our core, we are a 2 women studio, we have testers, players, streamers, voice-actors, supporters and reviewers from all over the globe who have, without a doubt, made our upcoming games better experiences.

So what did they say that has impacted on our development choices? I’ll try and summarise their pearls of wisdom here and how we’ve acted on their experiences.

Disclaimer: We used Tyranobuilder as our engine for our first visual novel, Royal Duality. We have now moved to the Renpy engine. I am sure that Tyranobuilder can be customised to cater for the pain points mentioned below. However, out of the box, Renpy has functionality that helped address a lot of them. This is an opinion piece and I completely respect whichever tools devs like to use! Create what you enjoy in the engine that suits you the best.  

1)     Accessible and assistive tech-friendly

“I can’t read the text.”

In Royal Duality, we used images to render letters and notes beautifully. However, these were not only difficult to read, but they also were not machine-readable, and alt-text couldn’t be added easily. This impacted the entire game in critical areas. We subsequently made an audio drama to bring the story of Royal Duality to those with visual needs. But by our own admission, it was an equitable, not equal, experience, and it made the Royal Duality game un-inclusive, which we, ourselves, we disappointed in.

Therefore, in our upcoming games, we have committed to using machine-readable text and clearer interfaces. These games are machine-readable for screen-readers and compatible with keyboard-only navigation.

2)     Helping the player know the characters

“Who is Sam?”

A fair comment, for people joining streams, or watching with the sound off, it would be hard to tell (she’s the woman on the left). There is no focus on her speaking, there is no visual indicator and no portrait beside her dialogue.

Another piece of feedback was that ‘as a new player, I forget voices and names, it’d be helpful to have a reminder’. We have, therefore, implemented that in our upcoming game ‘The Waiting Room’ (and dare I say…it is also a crucial factor…no spoilers)

3)     Keep players immersed with better UI where it matters

“Wow, an OS pop-up in a dark fantasy visual novel”

It hurt a little, but it was true, nothing breaks immersion like a grey box that doesn’t look anything like the rest of the game. Not so in our new game. These things are really important and when not done optimally can have poor consequences (one tester laughed out loud when it happened).

4)     Don’t rely on visual/engine add-ons, implement grammar properly

“Where are the full stops?”

Reviewers quite rightly commented that the grammar was…absent in places. It is not an excuse, but I will say that we did have a gimmicky bouncing ball that is a default in Tyranobuilder that was meant to indicate when a speaker had finished their dialogue. However…it broke in one software update and we could never get it to work again (for shame)… we had anticipated fixing it pre-release but exporting games for Mac and Windows in Tyranobuilder when the game is over a certain size is…well…soul-destroying…

A lesson was learnt, use grammar correctly, purposefully and with intent.

5)     Think about the length and realistic doability

“I think(?) I have finished the game.”

Whilst brevity of dialogue was a factor, it was the sheer size and ambition of Royal Duality that made it a little overwhelming. At launch, we should have done better to indicate how long the game was (75k words…it’s a long one). The game doesn’t always do a great job at helping the player understand how much of the ‘game’ is completed (the narrator is deliberately duplicitous, but that isn’t an excuse), there are bonus scenes, skippable scenes, 6 endings, interludes…there’s a lot to take in and only one screen that helps you figure it all out. More in-context and out-of-game activities would have made this easier.

In retrospect, whilst we love the project and the game and wouldn’t change too much, we can recognise that as a new studio with a passion project with no marketing, reputation or games under our belt, Royal Duality isn’t the easiest experience for players to engage with.

We’ve worked on that with ‘The Perfect Specimen’, it’s very clear what it is and what you’re in for…you can probably do it in one sitting. It’s been a good opportunity for us to reflect on writing with narrative intent… focusing less on fully blown character development.

6)     Make the experience more customisable

“I wish I could turn the VA up and the SFX down”

In Royal Duality people live, laugh and love. They also died, cry and hate…very loudly…

The VA and SFX channel were shared making some stream experiences probably a little difficult to manage when we heard people exclaim “WOW, THAT’S SO LOUD!”….Whilst there are some sound editing lessons learnt, it was mostly not being able to turn up/down/off sfx and va as separate entities that caused the most issues.

In the Perfect Specimen, we took a different approach, we wanted to focus on music and sound design a little, so we opted for no VA…but the Waiting Room will have voice acting…we’re so excited!

Also, the Royal Duality UI was a little tricky to use and the preferences weren’t accessible from the home screen, Renpy helps us offer a much easier-to-control and customisable experience.