Void quest playtest @ London Indies pub night

[wjt]

A few kind souls at London Indies’ pub night played through the Void quest last night. I gave them a Stadia (xbox-style) controller, because I didn't bring a mouse and I wouldn't like to watch someone trying to aim the grapple with a touchpad or ThinkPad Trackpoint. Both players were game developers & experienced gamers.

void_runner

The first playtester was caught twice: once shortly after first triggering the enemy; and a second time when he went up rather than right at the signpost near the monk's island. On the third attempt he reached the monk easily.

This matches the pattern we have now seen many times: some players find this level extremely difficult, while for others it is almost too easy. I think it would be worth trying to redesign the level a bit, perhaps adding some safe zones (with #1208), but only after we implement a sprint stamina gauge (or decide we're not going to) because that affects the difficulty. (I told him about L1 to sprint when he first started. In hindsight I wish I hadn't. I designed the level & enemy movement so that it is possible to reach the goal without sprinting; but it's certainly easier if you sprint continuously.)

After talking to the monk, he immediately followed the correct path to the thread rather than retracing his steps. I asked him why; he says he generally assumes that he should explore new areas when they appear.

An onlooker liked the visual effect of the enemy's cloud of nothingness. Generally people praised the visual style.

grappling_hook_start

The same playtester figured out R2 to grapple immediately. I can't remember if I told him to use right-stick to aim. It took him a while to realise he had to go right at the bottom; he kept trying to grapple to the out-of-reach pins.

grappling_hook_pins

No issues here. He did not stop to talk to the button collector. He went down to the archipelago below, collected a few buttons, then went back up and right.

Around this point an onlooker said “so the point of the game is to collect buttons, right?”

grappling_hook_needles

The first sign of trouble! The tester completely ignored the signs that tell you how to use needles to hook round a corner. After a few minutes of watching him struggle, I pointed out the signs. It still took him a few minutes to get the hang of it and grapple across the river. Having done that, he ignored the path down to the bottom-left and went straight to the eight-needles puzzle. This time I pointed out the sign immediately and he solved the puzzle immediately.

The player & an onlooker both said words to the effect of "no-one reads signs". When I suggested we could have an NPC give you a hint if you talk to them, the player repeated "no-one will read that". He suggested visual clues in the environment. (Music to my ears: #1504 (comment).)

grappling_hook_powerup

Around this point I noted that, in a game being played to our left, the levels were carpeted in arrows telling you where to go next, and suggested that this game should have more arrows. Our player disagreed: he appreciated needing to explore and experiment.

No further observations here; he found the powerup & route out quite easily, and avoided the patrolling void first time.

grappling_hook_end

Isn't this the same place that I was before?

It wasn't immediately obvious to the player that the power-up from the previous level, giving him a longer thread, had persisted and so would make it possible to move to new areas of this familiar map.

void_grappling

This one seemed fun. It took a few attempts before the player solved it. The huge row of pins above you right after you trigger the chasing enemy wasn't immediately a clue that that was the right route, but still he solved it.

I think it was around this point that I mentioned that, if you use the keyboard to walk + aim, all the pins are aligned to 45° angles from starting positions, and the player indeed found that easier.

void_grappling_round_2

The timing here is tricky. But what I think frustrated both playtesters is that if you have attached your thread to needle 3, but aim incorrectly at pin 4, then the whole grapple collapses and you have to line it up again.

The second playtester suggested:

• A misfire should not retract the thread so far: if you have hooked 1, 2, 3, then you should be able to keep throwing from 3 until you hook 4 or explicitly cancel the grapple
• There should be a button on the controller (he tried, and suggested, xbox B) that retracts the thread by one step (which would cancel the whole grapple if you retract the first hook).

Neither of them remembered the lesson from three levels ago, that walking in the opposite direction cancels the throw.

The easier route through this level is the red one: go down from the large powerup, cross the void via the big rows of pins. They are a much larger grappling target. However both playtesters did what I always reflexively do (even though I know the level): they followed the yellow route.

On the yellow route, particularly with a controller (but also with keyboard (no mouse)), the throw from A to B is very hard to get right.

On both routes, the throws to C and D are also very fiddly.

All these throws have to be made quickly, under the stress of the enemy being right on your heels.

Both testers repeatedly got caught here. When they had been caught 3 times (and hence run out of (invisible) lives), they were kicked back to the previous level, void_grappling. They both thought this was unfair, in a way that they didn't seem to feel about being kicked back to the start of this level. "Get rid of lives" was the advice, with the rationale being: they had already solved the level-traversal & timing puzzle of void_grappling so making them repeatedly re-do work that the game knew they could do was not adding anything to the experience.

I'm inclined to agree! I would suggest that we pause further implementation of #1385, set the number of lives to be effectively infinite, and focus first on making failure have consequence in more places by adding health #1740. Having done that, we can set the number of lives back to 3 and try again: does it feel good to be kicked back to ink combat round 1 if you are thrice defeated in round 3? Or is it (as I expect) really frustrating?

An alternative: make it so that when you run out of lives, you are kicked back only to the start of the current level. This would make no difference in the void quest, but in stealth would mean that the checkpoints you have reached would reset (same as the current behaviour).

Grappling controls

These testers suggested that we could improve the grappling controls slightly:

• Add some indication of what you are targeting. My 30-second mockup of what I think they were describing (imagine the purple + yellow circle spinning):
  
• Make the aiming a bit more tolerant of inaccuracy so that if you're pointing in even vaguely the right direction (I would suggest 15°-20° either side of the correct angle) then lock onto the target
• As above, don't cancel the whole throw if you miss a link; instead add a way to explicitly retract the thread by 1 step.

Visual style

People recognised that the theme is "sewing" / "craft", based on StoryWeaver's thimble, needle, and buttons. They liked the visual style.

But funnily enough, no-one realised until I pointed it out that the ground is made of fabric with stitched edges. They didn't think it looked bad, it just didn't register as such.

Translation

We played Sueños Nocturnos for about 2 minutes. No-one present could speak Spanish. One person said it was a shame that we haven't got translations to English for these learner-contributed quests, because it limits the number of people who can really understand & appreciate the learners' work. An interesting point!

[manuq]

@wjt this is the most valuable feedback I've got so far for the Void quest. Thank you! Visual indication for the grapple target was also suggested in #1428 (comment) and I like the idea. A cancel button would indeed be better than the "walk in opposite direction" and cancelling one by one is really interesting. Also I agree that missing the pin should leave the grapple in the last needle.

[wjt]

I forgot to get the names of the playtesters to add them to the community playtesting credits. 😞