This page is intended to show the high level plan and a distilled list of feedback notes both critical and positive I received from play testers.
I absolutely loved working on this and learned a ton!
The Plan
- Learn the fundamentals of game design & strengthen game design skills
- Develop a complete playable portion (or Act 1)
- Externally playtest, source feedback and distill into action items
- Implement, refine, repeat!
I had a self-imposed deadline of not meandering too much – so 2 months to make something complete.
Early Process
For years I had been interested in designing a game but I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t want to make The Game of My Dreams because I Did Not Know How to Do That. I wanted to start small and finish something. And I wanted to make a thing I liked.
So I did this:
- Started watching tutorials on RPG Maker MV and looking at level designs from games I liked, to see what I found enjoyable about them.
- I blocked out some levels and started adding NPCs with dialog.
- I made some simple objects to examine and created simple events to show text when you interacted with them.
- I wrote a design doc and created a backlog with tasks.
- I built some enemies and created a spreadsheet with skills & damage values.
- I recorded battles, noted turn counts, damage, how I felt in the moment, and built a curve.
- I asked the internet so. Many. Questions.
And then a few weeks in, something playable emerged. I remember saying “oh, I’ve actually got a combat loop here” and being so pleased, haha. It may not be earth shattering, but I’ve learned so much and had lots of fun!
You can see my changelog here (warning: unfiltered thoughts) and observe the sort of meta progression that was happening alongside the game’s progression!
Iteration
It was important to me to get feedback and refine. I wanted to build experience at hearing and implementing feedback (or choosing not to, with intention). I sent builds out to friends both in and out of the game industry to get their thoughts and used their notes as grist for the game’s mill.
You can see a significant part of the mill here: Miro Board Link (recommend opening in new tab. Same as the one from the Overview page. Also contains unfiltered brain dumping).
The below sections represent the major changes made between versions based on feedback.
V3 – Current
Changes from V2:
- Combat heavily updated.
- Poppy’s kit refined, found better spot with tank identity
- Marigold gained Bloody Opener passive heal-on-kill.
- Currency “Gold” added & can be found in the world.
- Items adjusted & shopkeeper integrated into level (no longer need to go out of way to return to village).
- Dialog adjusted to strike better balance of exposition, mystique and direction.
- Characters named to deepen emotional connection & storylines added.
- Optional side dungeon added with reward
Playtest Feedback:
- Dialog is best its ever been.
- Combat felt like a complete experience.
- Felt like had lots of tools, which was more engaging.
- Almost everywhere the player had better guidance on where to go next.
- Liked optional side dungeon.
- Characterization was much better.
- TP management and generation felt a little opaque towards the end.
- Curing poison status felt bad because enemies would immediately re-apply it.
- The cure still had a heal attached so felt like good use of time and effort but still felt a bit off.
V2
Changes from V1:
- Combat heavily updated, Poppy with new spread of skills & Marigold’s kit was slightly refined
- Shopkeeper added in the village & dialog to breadcrumb going there.
- Shortcut added to the village.
- Introduced Forager & Scout faction and threaded them into the story
Playtest Feedback:
- Combat is extremely challenging.
- Frequently feel like you’ve made the wrong choice during combat.
- Consequences of wrong choice in combat are too harsh.
- Consequences stifle creativity & induces analysis paralysis.
- Going back to the village to sell items is a pain. But it felt good when actually there.
- Dialog is different, maybe a little too long now & has lost some mystique.
- Scouts felt dehumanized because Poppy & Marigold didn’t know their names or protest dispatching them
V1
Playtest Feedback:
- Dialog was charming!
- However everybody in the town is really suspicious.
- It is interesting but they don’t act like people.
- Short descriptions of skills when they unlocked were helpful.
- Combat is fun but feels like there was only one solution.
- Enjoyed tension of spending health
- Had choice of healing or doing damage but hated it when had to have Marigold heal Poppy because it meant I wasn’t dealing damage
- Combat does not feel challenging enough.
- Taunt is too valuable to not have 100% uptime of:
- It removes any fear of Marigold dying.
- It feels like Poppy loses a turn to Taunt every time which feels bad.
- Felt like health was a valuable commodity
- Mixture of opinions around equipment; some players didn’t think about it at all, others would say things like ‘in the future when you add gear…’ suggesting to me they fully expected gear and attributed its lack of presence to the game being incomplete.
Elhora Davis Game Design 