Last night, I had the opportunity to show the latest build to some friends, who are developers themselves. Now usually I take pity on any poor soul who has the misfortune of asking a developer to playtest his or her game–but I have to say how impressed I was with their restraint; all three simply offered feedback from a player’s perspective, and didn’t rework the design of the game from the ground up, like I have a tendency to do.
My friends shall remain anonymous here, since I didn’t ask permission to use their real names in this post, and these days, one can never be too cautious about this sort of thing.
The one who played the longest actually took the time to clear the entire floor of monsters (which took about 15 minutes). He said he was compelled to do this because
- He likes to completely clear games out of principle
- The rats were so repulsive he felt the need to exterminate them to extinction
It made me realize one of the things the prototype is sorely lacking: state changes on the in-game map, to show which rooms have been discovered and cleared. It also made me think a bit about rewards for clearing an entire region–maybe this is how you get the boss to appear, or maybe a special NPC (like a merchant) appears only once the realm is free of monsters. Or I could go full Captain Eo style, and have the boss turn into a friendly NPC after you break the corruption within him. (Bonk’s Adventure did this too, now that I think about it.)
Another tester expressed that once the summons were in place during a battle, there wasn’t much the summoner could do but stand and watch, or take cover. He suggested adding a basic attack, so the summoner could contribute to the damage dealing output of the party. This was actually in the very first prototype of Soulcaster 1, and was removed on my brother’s suggestion to keep the focus on the summons. So while it’s unlikely I’ll restore the summoner’s attack, I thought a bit about what the player could do once the summons are placed.
One thing I want to try is a concept of “blessing” the summons who have already been placed. It would require the summoner to be able to walk through the summons, which is a bit game breaking, but might be worth it. For example, after summoning Shaedu with Q, you could press Spacebar to open a small menu and pick a blessing to apply to her: camouflage, poisoned arrows, chain lightning arrows… Aeox could turn to stone… Bloodfire could become a landmine, trading his range attack for a devastating blast when a foe gets near him.
This system might even replace the current use item menu (demonstrated in yesterday’s video as the repellent ward). All the special use items could be tied to summons, keeping the focus on them entirely. If it turns out to be fun, it’ll be a bit of a challenge to keep the interface from slowing down or confusing the player. It’s definitely worth exploring.
Next week is cut a bit short by my trip to Seattle for PAX, but I think I can at least prototype the basics of this system before I leave.