Tonight was another highly productive playtest, this time with none other than Greg Kasavin of Supergiant Games. After finishing Bastion, I have a new level of respect for Greg’s design and storytelling savvy, so I was really excited and anxious to hear what he would say about Escape Goat.
Overall he enjoyed playing it through, with just a few levels serving up more frustration than he would normally endure. The difficulty tuning is the main thing I am focusing on at this point, so it was great to know which levels were the real sticking points. He had great advice for extra aesthetics and details, like idle animations for the creatures and some more deliberate feedback for completing levels and unlocking new levels.
At this stage, the playtests still result in the usualy 3 pages of notes, but the related tasks are way less scary. It’s all about tuning, decorations, and minor glitches to fix. It’s coming along nicely and I can’t wait to present it to the XNA Creator’s Club soon.