Hello again everybody! I am back once again to tell you about the amazing progress for Same Day Delivery and dive into the playtests, what players have said, and how it will change our priorities in the final three sprints. We are well over halfway now, and with the final sprint being used primarily for last-minute polish and game submission, we really only have two sprints left to add features, so we are grinding away to make Same Day Delivery as fun as possible.

We had another great playtest, and from personal experience, I can confidently say that this build is my favorite and is really starting to show the fun and goofy aesthetic of our game. I am happy to report that most/all of the playtesters agreed and they gave us tons of good suggestions for some quick improvements.

Demographics

We were able to get 10 players for this playtest, with the majority being between ages 18-25. In previous playtests, around 75% of players played games every day, while only 50% do in this one, showing that we are getting a wider range of players that will have differing opinions, which is good for us to see how the game plays for different people.

Control Statistics and Suggestions

Driving, walking, and delivering controls are all feeling generally better, with both control questions receiving more "good" answers than in previous sprints. Driving controls are 50/50 between good and okay, which is by far the best we have had, and walking/delivering controls have a whopping 80% good rating, showing some amazing steps in the right direction. 80% of players reported time moving faster while playing, which is also a sizable increase, and even though the upgrades system has just been implemented with a couple of bugs, it still has 50% good ratings. In general, none of our systems have a single "bad" rating, which is great to have already, as now we can focus more on pushing from good to great.

We did get many good suggestions for control changes to make a better experience, and not only do there seem to be fewer control problems overall, but the major suggestions are things that we already planned on doing, which is good to hear. The first is that all players want a better turning radius on the van to make it easier to traverse the map. While there is an upgrade for this, players wanted a bit more control at the start, so we plan on doing that but making only making it buttery smooth after purchasing the upgrade. Everyone still wants a sensitivity slider, as the starting sensitivity is pretty high, so that is now one of our top priorities for this sprint to ensure that all players can pick the perfect sensitivity for them. The last major suggestion was with van reversing, as the reverse directions are inverse and make backing up difficult, we agree wholeheartedly with the players on this and it should be a quick fix to get it feeling right. Lastly, players want to have more camera range, namely being able to look further up, to help throw packages further and see their surroundings more.

Bugs

The players were able to sniff out a lot of our bugs, ranging from the larger ones that we were aware of to some smaller ones that we hadn't noticed. The biggest one was that the van was able to drive through everything, making all the roads and houses meaningless outside of aesthetics. Luckily we were well aware of this and already have a fix at the time of this being written. Next was the upgrades store not taking your coins when you buy something, making it too easy to buy every upgrade. Our upgrade shop was more of a test, so we were aware of and not worried about this bug, but it did allow more players to buy and therefore test every upgrade, which was actually more beneficial than a working shop. The only bug that might be more of an issue is that if players spam the "F" key to get in and out of the van, they can get stuck inside of the van unable to get out while seeing Sheldon's body outside of the van. We are hopeful that our driving changes will solve this, but if not, we will focus heavily on it until it is fixed, as it is the most game-breaking of the bugs so far.

Upgrade Statistics

This was the first playtest in which we had a functional upgrade shop, allowing players to buy and test the various upgrades. As I mentioned before, there is a bug that doesn't take the player's Zerg coins after buying an upgrade, but that actually allowed them to test more upgrades. We were able to ask whether testers liked the upgrades, what they would change, and which upgrades they purchased. First, we found that no one rated the upgrade shop as feeling bad, with the most common being a "good" rating, a very good statistic to have right off the bat. 80% of players bought at least one upgrade, and the most purchased upgrades were Weightlifting and Workgloves, probably due to cost. Upgrades were generally seen as too expensive, and we had suggestions for tiered upgrades, such that they are bought 5 times for more coins and better stats each time.  We appreciated all of these thoughts and suggestions for the upgrades, and we hope for even more good ideas with the next build and a more completed upgrade shop.

Conclusion

Those were the main points from this playtest, we are all very happy with not only the overall increase in ratings for different game systems but also the countless suggestions for how to push Same Day Delivery to the next level. We are getting closer and closer to the end, which is especially when we'll have to slow down on the large features and focus more on the small tweaks and fixes, like these suggestions. After this coming sprint, we will switch gears to almost entirely focus on the smaller adjustments, and we are hoping that it will take an already great game and make it even better. As always I cannot wait to see where we are by the next post, but I will definitely keep you all informed. 

Thank you for reading, see you next time!

-Kevin Estes

Game Designer