Hey everybody!

It's Kevin, back again to give more updates on the progress of Same Day Delivery! Things have been going very smoothly, with us focusing on completing all the base systems for the game so we can see early on how everything works together and detect any unforeseen bugs. This has been a success so far, with us getting early testing of menus and upgrades along with basic gameplay. In this blog, I will be going over the playtest data that we were able to gather, what everything means, and how it will affect what we do moving forward. 

Playtest Demographics

For this playtest, we were able to get 11 responses from a variety of ages, ranging from 17-30. The most common age bracket for players was 21-25 years old, which is also our target age range. Everyone either played games every day or most days, which is good for now but we will want to get a bigger variety in how often players play games in the future. This is because people who play games often see the similarities between games and can connect the dots easily, while people who don't play games might struggle. It will be very beneficial to see what does and doesn't make sense for non-gamers, but since these are still relatively early system testing builds, we are okay with saving that for the next playtest.

Controls

It's not too hard to see that with players constantly driving or running, we would want the controls for both of those to be as smooth and easy to use as possible. For this reason, our first three questions pertaining to this, asking how the driving controls feel, how the running/delivering controls feel, and any suggestions to make them better.

What we have found this time around is a consistent improvement in how the controls feel for the players. Although we don't have many "Great" ratings for either, we understand that getting these controls perfect takes a lot of time. Because of this, we are taking what we get, and we are very happy to see no more "bad" ratings and an increase in "good" ratings overall. While it is a steady increase, it is an increase nonetheless, and if we maintain this steady ascent through the rest of development, we should expect to have great controls by the end.

There were a couple of suggestions for control changes that would be a quick way for us to make the gameplay smoother. By far the most common suggestion was a sensitivity slider, so players can increase or decrease the camera speed depending on what they prefer. Players also wanted to jump and drift, things that we hope to add in the future already. Those were the main 3, showing us that we aren't having many issues, and the best way to improve the controls is slowly adjusting values until we get it feeling just write.

Bugs

With the addition of more mechanics and systems, there were bound to be bugs that came with them, but luckily for us our players were able to find a large amount of them for us. The biggest of these was with the upgrades, as the coins that players earned would not transfer to the upgrades screen, thus making it impossible to buy and test upgrades. While we were aware of this issue and were already working on a fix, it was a shame that players weren't able to test out the upgrades further but will allow us to get all upgrades functional instead of just some.

Some less common bugs included the van taking a while to reverse after hitting a house, which we knew about and planned to fix, and a few players not being able to get in the van at all, which is a lot larger problem. Not only does this have no clear cause which makes it harder to fix, but this bug prevents players from using a core mechanic and makes the game practically impossible to beat. Therefore, we are going to focus very hard on this bug first and ensure that everyone can drive the van, then address the other problems after.

Other Suggestions

To be sure that we covered everything, the last question on our feedback form simply asks the player if they have any other questions or suggestions, which is a great way for them to mention anything that didn't fit into any of the other questions.

One suggestion made by multiple people was to bring back many of the extra pieces such as fences, bushes, voice lines, etc. While we already had this in mind for the next build, it is really nice to hear just how much players appreciate the filler and enjoy the game more when walking and driving around a more fleshed-out world. Players also want beep sound effects when reversing and more voice lines, showing that they also like the humor aspect of Same Day Delivery and want more of it which is great to hear. We will have to prioritize the bugs and control changes as they have a greater impact on gameplay, but this definitely tells us to value the humor and style as part of the experience and use it to our advantage.

Conclusion

This playtest in general has been great, showing us the biggest problems along with the largest successes. We will plan on making most of these suggestions a reality and hope to continue getting such awesome feedback. The changes that players can expect in the next version of Same Day Delivery will be completed upgrades system, animations, and more finalized levels. Development for this game has been a blast so far and my team is amazing, not only at working nonstop but also at keeping the work environment a fun one. That is all I have for you, please tune in soon for another post to see how the game is going. Goodbye for now!

Kevin Estes

Game Designer