Designer Blog 4

Howdy, and welcome back to the fourth designer blog for Gobby’s Farm! Kaeli here to talk about how our build went, analytics and how our most recent build went! With this sprint, a lot of our team got much needed rest during the break, including myself for my birthday. But with that, when it came to making the build, there were some issues that arose. Of course, it is unrealistic for everyone to be fully ready to jump back into working but with the build, there were components that were missing and were required for the build to be considered optimal. We definitely stayed up late getting the build ready and playable, but we did!

For statistics, we had 6 downloads but only two people left feedback. That is on me to be more thorough with making sure people know where the feedback forum is and to respond to it. Even with the little info I got for the game, I received valuable and much needed clarity on how the game felt and what needed to be changed immediately, both people leaving a thorough list.

The two felt the gameplay loop was fun and attention grabbing, but not enough to make them want to choos “Strongly Agree”. When asking for feedback on what could be improved, people brought up that the bear traps were in the ground and unable to be seen, leading to a lot of sudden deaths that were infuriating. There were also bugs with the throwing mechanic, where they could throw an item once but afterwards, any item thrown would disappear from the world forever, along with said points. However, that has been fixed as of typing this which is good! 

There were also requests for sounds, more decoration, for the environment to feel more like the Wizard's garden at night, to help the player feel more like the tiny goblin they are. The mist clouded a lot of area’s making it hard for players to see where they were going or as one quote says, “It’s almost like Gobby has an astigmatism or my render distance is very low.” This will be fixed by the next sprint, along with adding lighting to make the level more fun and bright, along with the UI brightness working so players can see on darker monitors.

Another thing was larger resolution screens, the drop down menus were viewable from the top of the screen, making the menu look weird and jaunting with them not filling screens or being small while the in game UI looked huge. 

Enemies such as the Eye Sentry and Arcane Turret were fun to interact and avoid, making the more lethal threats a success. Though the Eye Sentry needed more tuning for its pathing, especially on rougher terrain. Some jumping puzzles for the environment, while fun, were frustrating and didn’t make it super fun to miss a jump and immediately die. Only one finished quota 3 and got home safe, the other didn’t and got lost a lot. There were terrain where the player was confused on if they were jumpable or were they just there and without certain models, that confusion continued. 

Lots were also changed with the meeting with the Directors, Dan and Jeff, who gave me good insight to how the game was feeling. The game loop was perfect and fun to play, made perfect sense and created funny moments. However, the amount of mazes caused issues and frustration, bringing the question of how did all the mazes make this semi open world? In which it didn’t and even as a designer I knew I wasn’t happy with it. Talking with my level designer and producer, I made the decision that I wanted the maps to be changed for only one area to be maze like and all others to be using the idea of sneaking around to collect points, to run back to home, and to throw those points into the spawn area to make the playability more fun and stressful. With that, we will be messing with time to make sure each week, players have more time, that enemies are a little more aggressive, and some will be able to be sabotaged by throwing. Sniffing will be changed to identify what plant Gobby is looking at and how many points it costs, removing poison completely. Lots will be changed before the new sprint build, but I know this will be the best for Gobby’s Farm.