Blog - Playtest #2 Contest Results

March brings the end of the Playtest #2 Contest of Champions, and with it some winners! The contest had a great turnout, and generated a TON of super insightful feedback that is going to reall help me hone in on what to work on next! A huge thank you to everyone that participated! This Devlog is going to be more of an analytical one as we dig into some of the insights provided by the playtest responses.

Since so many of you participated, this contest is going to have 2 winners randomly chosen from those of you who completed the survey! To celebrate these winners, I'd like to share a piece of feedback I received from each of them as well. I will also be reaching out to them directly so they can claim their sweet $10 Steam gift cards!

Firstly, I want to say that I wasn't sure how I was getting bonuses. was it just using multiple of the same "type" of cards why did I get no healing when I included a healing card? Is that a bug or do I not understand the mechanic? BUT this was the best part of the game. I think once you get deeper in the game and get different kinds of attacks I can see this being very deep and complex. I am also excited for art for the cards. Even something like color coding the kinds of attacks and or maybe sword, shield, and potion symbols next to the stats would add a lot. I could talk all day about these kinds of combat systems.

Our first winner had this to say about Battles, and highlights a number of important things for me that I think a lot of the feedback about this system had. The card game has potential, but its is incredibly confusing, and doesn't feel like it has much depth or strategy.

In all honesty, the quote above is probably one of the most favorable pieces of feedback Battles received. With a quarter of playtesters rating Battles as making their core experience worse, one of my next objectives is to overhaul Battles. The goal is to make them more clear, provide players more control and strategic decision making, but keep the core of what people liked about them.

Love the relationship plots. I see a lot of potential in those. I also like that you gain FP to spend. Gives relationships a transactional nature - love it. Not sure what badges do, but I liked getting them. Felt like there wasn't enough ways to incorporate these. Adventures were a pretty good way

Winner number two was a huge fan of the relationships, and their feedback gave me a unique problem to solve outside of the game. How do I prioritize development of a feature that playtesters are perfectly split on? I know the sample size is small, but it does force me to think about who my target audience is and really drill into what about each feature is appealing to that audience.

What this graph shows me is that I need more information to better qualify these responses, and I need to decide which audience I want to target with this game. My hope is that I can appeal to both groups of players, but I think when it comes to something like character relationships and conversations, it's going to be tough to find a solid middle ground. This will likely require some serious creativity on my part to truly satisfy both audiences, but I think I'm up to the challenge!

Thanks for reading, and be on the lookout for more technical Devlogs at the end of March! I've got a lot of work ahead of me, and a clearer picture of where I'm going thanks to all of you!