I’ve been working on improving the visual clarity of the boss fight based on feedback, and I’m also continuing to revise the early part of the game.
I used to get feedback about players getting lost early on, but I didn’t fully understand it at the time. Now I think it might happen when players don’t follow the tutorial exactly as intended. So I’ve been rebuilding the early section almost from scratch.
Some important systems—like “Contact”—had weak tutorials, so I’m reworking those as well. Contact is a core mechanic where players take risks in combat to recover health and generate resources. If players don’t notice this, the overall feel of combat can be very different.
Since I’m trying to stick to the original idea of limiting player movement as little as possible, it’s labor-intensive to get everything to feel right. I’m currently using a simple, barebones in-house script, but I’m starting to wonder if the game might need a different kind of scripting—something conceptually and structurally distinct.
Whether the feedback is encouraging or frustrating, the process of sifting through it like panning for gold—and then making real improvements—is an indescribably rewarding feeling.
As always, I find it most effective to assume that what players feel is 100% right, and what they think is 100% wrong.The exposure penalty on Twitter, which had cut my impressions down to one-tenth, finally seems to be easing.
Twitter has been the best for driving traffic to Steam, and Reddit is best for feedback, so during the weeks of suppression, Steam traffic took a hit.
I’m hoping things will pick up again now.