Posted October 11, 2020 by JLock
Initial Implementation
After 6 weeks of development, we have reached the final devlog! The main even this week was the 1 hour testing session, with testers filling out an online form afterwards. Feedback was generally positive which is good to hear, but the testing session did produce some interesting findings and pieces of feedback for me to take into consideration. Unfortunately I've been unable to make any substantial progress this week due to a whole bunch of other things that I also needed to get done, but I was able to get a set of tutorial levels up and running complete with on-screen instructions which I am very happy with!
I had already suspected that players were struggling to grasp the concept of the gameplay, and the feedback received via my online form confirmed this. Two questions I included on the form were: "Do you feel that a tutorial level would be a worthwhile addition?" and "How easily did you understand the gameplay?". The answers from both questions indicate that payers were confused about what to do, and that it might have hurt their enjoyment of the game. This is perfectly understandable since so far I've given no clear instructions and just dropped the player into the deep end and expected them to figure it out.
To address this I wanted to make a short series of tutorial levels to get the player up to speed. I had considered having an instruction page in the game but I think trying to describe how to play is much more difficult in words, and so I opted to have levels where the player can learn by navigating very basic levels and get a feel for the controls.
Once completed, the player can go back and play through the tutorial as many times as they like.
Other than the tutorial, there are more features I'd like to have a go at adding to the game over the next few days, including:
Just as a point of interest, here are the tester responses to the question "Of the following features, which would you most like to see added?":
When I included this question I expected "Sound Effects" and "More Types of Obstacles/Enemies" to be the top responses, so I was really surprised when music was the top answer!
Overall, it's been a fun journey working through this project, and I hope everyone has enjoyed playing through the various stages of completion. Thank you to all who contributed to the form, and thank you to everyone who gave me feedback over the past few weeks!