So… To Summarize GGC
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Gotland Game Conference, GGC, has come and gone but Big Game Project, BGP, remains. At least for a few more days as we finish up our reports and giving our games a final polish before submitting them to different exhibitions and competitions around the world or simply so people could test a less broken edition of our game. Which is our case as our balance was quite unfair towards new players or players which weren’t used to hardcore tactical games. To be fair we are pleased with how GGC turned out, we received a lot of positive feedback on alterations we could or rather should make in order to expand the concept. Even as only a small number of people played the game until the end and even fewer actually completed the game all who played it enjoyed the concept and our idea regarding the game and what we wanted to achieve. One of the things people had most problem with was that the difficulty curve went from 0-100 instantly as the player completes our tutorial. Where the player goes from escorting one prisoner passed a single enemy and an obvious way to distract him in order for you to get out. To suddenly be presented a maze with five gourds patrolling, multiple routes of moving them and three prisoners split into different cells around the level and now the player has to calculate routes by taking into consideration guards path and what objects to activate in which order. 
Tutorial 
Full Game So from a simple level with an obvious outcome we now have a confusing maze, this however can be simplified by splitting the main level into different parts and from the tutorial level add-on more content each time the player succeeds in rescuing a prisoner. This way the level and the difficulty builds up more successively with the player’s ability to play the game as we intend them to do. Even if the main thing was the difficulty curve many players also had problem to understand intractable objects with how to use them properly, their range of effect and what they was. Secondly was the monitors they didn’t understand the purpose of moving the prisoners around the level by clicking the one the prisoner standing on and then another one for the direction they want to go in. This seemed redundant as it wasted seconds of game time which could lead to failing as the window of opportunity could close as they would then need to click on an intractable object which itself had a drop down menu with buttons they need to press. All this often led to players lose as the prisoners are seen by guards patrolling the corridors and after a few times this got frustrating since they hardly got past the holding cells and end up losing the game before they could start. 
Drop Down Menu (Blue box) with Tool tip (Black box) As of now we intend to keep the menus for all objects due to that we plan to increase the intractability for them as well the option for objects to trigger each other, widening the gameplay. Regarding the movement controls we have been discussing alternatives but are keeping the current mainly due to our narrative and plan to work on how to more clearly present the narrative through our mechanics. Otherwise we are extremely pleased with GGC and all feedback we received (along with winning the Almedalen Award second year in a row) and we really feel that we can continue working on this concept. We are hopeful that we can release this as our first game and use this as a stepping stone for our future career in-game development.  |