Kandria
Playtesting Kandria
In the past few weeks we've been conducting a number of blind playtest sessions – sessions during which someone new plays the game for the first time, and you watch them play. Most of the sessions so far have been remote over the net, but we've also done some in-person ones this week, and there's a few more scheduled next week.
We've gotten a ton of data from these sessions, from game-breaking bugs to minor inconveniences, to confusing design issues. The majority of the reported problems have already been fixed now. There's a few minor ones remaining, and a couple of major ones that'll take some more thinking before we can try and fix them.
It was high time we started doing this stuff, and I'm starting to feel a bit more confident in the game's overall playability. Aside from the bugs we fixed, we also improved on the design of the levels to make them easier to navigate and understand, and we extended the tutorial to explain the rest of the controls.
The tutorial is now laid out over the first few quests you go on so that things aren't front-loaded. They're also all very quick to go through and shouldn't interrupt gameplay much.
Because of all of these playtests and reports I've barely had the time to work on the combat like I was supposed to this month. I'll try to reign it back in to that next week, though.
Aside from all this, we've also got a new team member! He'll be taking care of the sound effects for Kandria, which has been a sore spot for me for a while, so I'm really glad to have him on!
Cai
I'm Cai, I'm a Sound Designer for video games. I've been in the industry for 2 years! I focus on making impactful, meaningful sounds that help to immerse the player in the world we create! Kandria is a really exciting project to be involved with! The story and atmosphere of the game are both compelling and exciting so I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to this through the sound!
Tim
This week I've been implementing useful quest feedback thrown up from the blind playtests Nick's been running. For example, finessing enemy spawn locations, adding more lore interacts, and adding quest reminders if you return to a quest-giver. I've also prepared a message template we can use to approach the press at the coming online version of GDC (using the ranked press list we already made).
Soon
So, next week is going to be even more in-person playtesting, and hopefully finally some more work on the combat design. Then the week after will be mostly reserved for GDC, and then there's only barely a week left in the month. Time is passing very quickly!