What a ride!

The game has been out for more than a month and it has been amazing. I received a lot of feedback, it has been played by hundreds of people and I was able to do many playtestings sessions by presenting it at Talk & Play 52 in Berlin.

Nightcrawler at Talk & Play in Berlin.

Getting an early version of a game out is great, because now I have seen a lot people playing it and I have a better understanding of what works and what I can improve.

What works

During playtesting, I noticed there were roughly two kinds of people:

• Type 1 got frustrated with the game, after a while they just gave up or ragequit after yet another death. They said it was fun, but not for them.

• Type 2 got addicted, you could clearly see it triggering something in their brain that was like “challenge accepted, I need to win this” and they played it until the end.

I think this is a good signal that I’m going in a good direction, seeing people having fun with the game it’s definitely important at this stage of development, but doesn’t mean we can’t improve it!

What doesn’t work

As of right now, we have one audience that likes it and one that stops playing it. That’s fine, making a game that everyone would enjoy is borderline impossible, but I think we have some room for improvement here that could make quite a few Type 1 players enjoy the game too.

What I made is a fun and punishing 2D stealth game, but I think with a couple of changes I can achieve the following:

• Making it more forgiving, so more fun for player Type 1
• Making it explicitly more replayable
• Making it more open ended (more ways to complete same levels)
• Still keeping it punishing for player Type 2

How to do this? With three changes I’m currently testing

Change 1: add a Objective to be killed in all levels.

I want to switch the main goal of the game from “Kill Everyone” to “Kill this specific target”. This has some important implications:

• You are not forced to kill all guards, so the level becomes instantly easier
• You can continue playing the level after the objective is reached
• You can replay the level and try different approaches

A new Objective enemy in the new tutorial.

Change 2: add knock-out to enemies

Since you don’t have to kill everyone, it makes sense that you can just knock-out enemies. Knocked out enemies are incapacitated indefinitely, but can be woken up by other enemies if they see them.

Knocking out an enemy.

The new attack

So the attack interaction would move from 1 button to kill the enemy to 1 button to KO the enemy. If you want to kill them, you have to press again, this means that killing the enemy takes more time and the advantage is that they cannot be woken up.

The new bloody way to kill enemies.

Early playtesters reported that this kill feels very satisfying to play!

Change 3: add level achievements for different playstyles

Now with these changes in place, the levels can be played in different styles:

• Normal, just complete the objective
• Assassin, complete the objective and kill all the guards
• Pacifist, complete the objective without killing any guard
• Ghost, complete the objective without getting spotted, any corpses getting spotted, any KOd guards getting spotted

This means that if you are Type 2 player described before, you can have the same punishing gameplay just by going for the “Assassin” playstyle.

Two potential approaches

This opens up to some different potential approaches though, as “Ghost” could be added on top of other playstyles too and not be a standalone playstyle. For example:

Approach 1: Normal | Assassin | Pacifist | Ghost

or

Approach 2: Normal | Ghost Normal | Assassin | Ghost Assassin | Pacifist | Ghost pacifist

I’m still not sure what would be the best approach, I had an interesting conversation about this on Reddit with some insights.

If you have ideas feel free to comment here on Itch with your thoughts!

Why I think this new core gameplay is an improvement

This changes will have a big impact on the gameplay:

• Type 1 players can still enjoy the game at their own pace without a very punishing experience
• Type 2 players can still enjoy the punishing gamplay (and get rewarded from it via the achievements)
• Type 2 players can progress even if they are stuck in a level. For example, if a level is too difficult to do in “kill everyone” mode they can just complete it, go to the next and then go back to complete the Assassin challenge in the future.

I think last point is particularly interesting, because right now the game is unavoidably punishing and while this is fun, it can also lead to frustration and to some players quitting.

I want to avoid people closing the game out of frustration if possible, that’s not a good sign. With these changes they can do something else instead and are not being completely blocked from progressing.

Recap of upcoming changes

So for version 0.2 “Core gameplay update” I want to do these changes:

• Add KO mechanic
• Add 1 target to kill instead than having to kill everyone
• Add level victory screen and level-achievements
• Add music and sound effects

I already have most of these changes done and I started so early playtests with friends, hopefully I’ll manage to release an update soon!

I’m also experimenting with a new secret thing that feels super cool, but I’ll leave it for the next devlog as it deserve it’s own post. It should be also included in the next update! 👀

Leo