Hello again everyone!

I am back once again to give updates on Same Day Delivery and how our most recent playtests went. As of now, we are on our final full sprint, meaning this playtest and the next are crucial to fixing up any remaining issues and creating the best experience we can. The whole team is working hard to get as much done as possible, and we are all so excited to make a final push and finish strong. Considering that we are getting into crunch time, we have had to cut some of our wishes for the game and prioritize more vital systems. Along with that, the surveys from this playtest were able to reveal some of the things that we need to change or add before we publish the game.

Demographics

Now onto the playtests, we were able to get 7 players this time around, not as much as with other playtests, but that is mostly due to issues we had in this build, resulting in most feedback forms mentioning the same problem, so we decided to cut it short. Our common age range is 18-25, with 43% being 18-20 and 29% 21-25, this still aligns with our intended audience, making their feedback even more useful to us. 71% of our playtesters play games every day, which is good to find bugs and issues that aren't in other games, but it is nice to also have input from people who don't play games to see what we can do to make Same Day Delivery easy enough to play for non-experienced gamers. 

Controls

Aside from the issues mentioned previously which I will get more into shortly, controls are still generally well-regarded. Walking and delivering controls have a 57% "good" rating and no bad ratings, the best we have seen thus far.  We have been showing a steady increase in ratings for Sheldon controls, and as long as we don't make large changes, we will be able to end with smooth, easy walking and delivering controls. Driving controls, despite being affected by the bug, also have pretty good ratings. although it did receive one bad rating, it still maintained 43% "okay" and 43% "good" ratings, with players mentioning that driving felt good despite the bug. We have made no changes to the upgrade shop, but we are happy to report that all players who bought upgrades gave the shop controls a "good" rating.

Bugs

I've kept you all waiting to know what this mysterious bug is, now I can explain it and other bugs that we found in this build. The largest bug was with the new driving system, as although the controls were better in general, if you drove into something, the van would slowly tip over and eventually become undrivable. This bug did result in funny pictures, but was obviously a huge issue and kept players from completing all deliveries. Luckily, our driving programmer has already fixed this issue and we now have a fully functional van. 

All other bugs are smaller ones that we have had in past playtests. These issues haven't been severe enough to do at the time, but now that we are nearing the end of production, we will take the time to fix all of them. These bugs include the shop not taking coins when you buy an upgrade, clock display issues, and some packages taking 2-3 tries to pick up. While none of these bugs break the game, getting them all resolved would do a lot to improve the experience. We are already working on the package issue and will smash through the others after that. Thankfully aside from the van tipping, there are no other new problems, so we are confident that we will end with a bugless game.

Wants

The players were able to help us find all the bugs in the build, but they also gave us great ideas about what should be in the game or changed to easily improve the feel of Same Day Delivery. The first of these was the long-requested sensitivity slider, which one of the programmers has already developed and simply needs to be implemented into the game for the next build. Next was faster van speeds in general, another frequently requested change. We want to maintain the slow, bulky feel of the van but also agree with the players that it does get annoying to have such a slow van in a time-based game. I personally will spend most of this sprint playing the game and adjusting speed numbers to get the perfect feel. The last want from players is cheaper upgrades, this one is the easiest to change and makes a lot of sense. Sheldon only makes 1 or 2 coins per delivery, so having an average upgrade cost of 30 is a bit steep. The only decision we need to make for that is whether we should increase how much Sheldon makes to have players get a bigger sense of earning or reduce the cost of upgrades to maintain the story that Sheldon is working for chump change. We will make a final decision next class and since it only requires a couple of number changes, can implement it that same day. 

Those are the main points we got from this playtest, and with only one more playtest until submission, we are hopeful that we can fix all the issues currently present, clean up a few more next time, and end with a smooth experience. We are grinding away at tasks and plan to continue pushing to the very end. We are already satisfied with the game in its current state, so we just plan to add simple and quick things that involve mostly visual improvements and have little risk of creating more bugs. If all goes well, we will be able to add a business district, complete obstacle collisions, complete pedestrian behavior, a small tutorial, goofy/informative UI, and more. As always, I can't wait to see how we do this sprint, and I know that my team will do great work this sprint and push Same Day Delivery from a good game to a great one.

See you all next time, thank you for reading!

-Kevin Estes

Game Designer