Mana Punch: Under a Spotlight

From the testing sessions, we have done the testers seem to have a grip on our goal and overall vision of the game. Thanks to the fairly simple and digestible premise of a wizard brawler, however, since they know our end goal right off the bat there far more accurate and critical when it comes to the places we fall short. This being a double-edged sword as while we are getting plenty of feedback in areas that are critical for the success of our games it also staggering how many people say that same thing about the same features. While this does point to some clear fix points, the animations, AI, and camera work being a few large ones from our last testing session, it can be disheartening to see that much feedback.

I’m reminded of what Professor Crispell said early on in the semester, “the closer you get the harder we’ll be on you,” which is also the overall vibe I’m getting from the testers. Most of them can see for themselves that our game has potential, that it can be fun if there were not so many glaring issues with it. So we fix them, try and sand down those edges and show it to them again and pray that it works better this time. Rinse and repeat until it's perfect, time runs out or something gets sick of looking at the same animation forty thousand times.

Now our intent for gameplay has been tested and well documented in the past, but our story elements have not. So I have to wonder how that will change when we start introducing the story bits to testers. Will it affect how the gameplay is perceived, will players think it matches with the story being told. We have story bits already written and getting put into the game at this very moment, but the only person besides Zack to read it is myself. So I wonder what will a tester's reaction to the story, will they be as understanding with the narrative ideas as they were with gameplay or will we be completely off the mark. It is a far more subjective field than mechanics, we all know and agree what a clunky brawler feels like, but a story about government corruption and empowerment, that is more objective.

Meaning that the responses we get will be more objective so we have to consider the validity of them more than the typical tester feedback. I honestly hope we are closer to the mark and get the same level of feedback we’ve been getting for the gameplay because that will at least mean we’re in the right direction. What I fear is people just saying, “I don’t know what’s going on,” or “this doesn’t make any sense,” because those are far less helpful and mean we have even more work to do revising the story elements alongside our gameplay elements.

We’re juggling two balls at the moment, but we’ve only given notice to one of them. And while we’ve begun to address and factor in those concerns, the other ball is just getting the spotlight turned on it so more things will have to be reworked and re-planned depending on the responses we get.