Thanks for watching! The new demo is up now over on Steam! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the recent changes: store.steampowered.com/app/3059390/Hexagod/
I'd love to test it out and give you some feedback. Unfortunately, I'm on a mac, so I can't play it. If you like, I can do Godot exports to mac for you.
You know what has helped me in addition to just getting testers, recording footage of myself playing through a significant portion intending for other people to see it. My goal is to be able to have people watch it and understand what is going on without me doing any voiceover or anything. Just that perspective shift of ME playing in front of someone else totally changes what I think of as a priority before I even finish recording. Any kind of obnoxious menu thing that I usually just avoid becomes a huge problem and I need to stop recording and fix it and start over. Any long period of boring repetitive gameplay that would cause people to skip through the video needs to get cut. Anything with too much information needs to be reduced. Any graphical glitches that cause confusion need to be fixed immediately. Then when watching it back I decide if it's demonstrating my intended experience. When I watch other people play and they don't quite get it, I don't have any way to tell if the stuff they didn't see is any good and it is difficult to tell what is most important. My goal is to get them to have as much fun with it as I do, and recording helps me identify the barriers to that. And if even I can't do a playthrough without serious jank, all that jank needs to be fixed ASAP.
100% watching someone play. But I also find my perspective tightens up and becomes more "real" when i'm playing to win versus when i'm just clicking through the game. For me this is when im testing multiplayer. When i'm testing live against a real person (rather than against the AI), my attitude changes. It forces me to become a player again, not just an all knowing designer.
Conducting play tests is so important for game dev, and its definitely an undervalued skill. I wish I was better at determining what to drill into it and what are good/bad signs.
This is the 3rd version of Hexagod that I've played and its my favorite so far. I like that tiles get bonuses for each adjacent tile now instead of every 2. I like being able to just build whatever I want instead of pulling card packs (although I liked the card packs too, just like this version better). It felt a lot more chill and relaxed. I think feeling like I had more control went a long way to adding to that feeling. Its really cool following along with your development process and I look forward to you videos and updates about Hexagod. So at least for me you're doing something right. Keep it up Aarimous!
You are definitely onto something! I find myself playing this demo frequently. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I love that you are willing to make these changes in effort to elicit the best outcome.
Played your demo for the first time last night. Whilst I've watched some of your videos, I haven't watched enough to really know what to expect. Steam says I played for 2.5 hours. The first time I played it through, there were a couple of confusing moments, but as I kept playing I started getting more and more into it. Game won't let me have more than 3 villagers? Ok cool, well let's add a whole pile of other things for a while then. At once point I had just enough tiles that my little villagers could alllmost clear them all in a day. So I started being determined to get them all empty, and figuring out the fastest ways to move around the board. That had me hooked for longer than it probably should have. A couple of things that got me (but for feedback, not complaints. I know it's a demo): First, I'm vision impaired, so not being able to make any of the menus and text larger was hard for me. Accessibility features like those would be very much appreciated in the final game. There were a few places I expected to get more info if I hovered, but there wasn't anything, so I just had to kinda figure it out. The first time the screen started changing colour, it turned orange and red pretty early, I started trying to figure out if I was doing something wrong/maybe my villager was getting tired or something. Overall though, I had a fun time, and look forward to seeing more. Playing has also made me more interested in following the journey here.
Ah, the love for having the omniscient perspective of gaming. I see it from developer, player, and outsider. 20 years of playing, a quarter that developing, and a beta tester for multiple games. Im fairly certain my first game will be fun. I just cant decide whether i want it to be 2 or 3d.
If you can't tell it is because you are in a silo and you think you know best what constitutes it being "fun". The truth is, you are not the arbiter of fun, you are it's curator and as it's curator -- you need to curate. Who are you designing this game for? Why do they want to play it? How do they have fun? For more concrete advice: You need to get this in front of players and playtest, playtest, playtest and STOP developing. Then based on what you learn from that feedback the path should be pretty clear where you need to go next to maximize or restore the fun in your game. Small changes. Incrementally made. Based on feedback. Tweak. Playtest. Adjust. Repeat. Source: I've published two tabletop games, and am working on my third title. I have raised nearly $200k for all my games on KS, and I have sold over $360k in copies. You can trust my advice. Best of luck to you!
Thanks for watching! The new demo is up now over on Steam! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the recent changes: store.steampowered.com/app/3059390/Hexagod/
I'd love to test it out and give you some feedback. Unfortunately, I'm on a mac, so I can't play it. If you like, I can do Godot exports to mac for you.
Make smaller games.
You know what has helped me in addition to just getting testers, recording footage of myself playing through a significant portion intending for other people to see it. My goal is to be able to have people watch it and understand what is going on without me doing any voiceover or anything. Just that perspective shift of ME playing in front of someone else totally changes what I think of as a priority before I even finish recording. Any kind of obnoxious menu thing that I usually just avoid becomes a huge problem and I need to stop recording and fix it and start over. Any long period of boring repetitive gameplay that would cause people to skip through the video needs to get cut. Anything with too much information needs to be reduced. Any graphical glitches that cause confusion need to be fixed immediately.
Then when watching it back I decide if it's demonstrating my intended experience. When I watch other people play and they don't quite get it, I don't have any way to tell if the stuff they didn't see is any good and it is difficult to tell what is most important. My goal is to get them to have as much fun with it as I do, and recording helps me identify the barriers to that. And if even I can't do a playthrough without serious jank, all that jank needs to be fixed ASAP.
That sounds like a good approach I haven't heard of
100% watching someone play. But I also find my perspective tightens up and becomes more "real" when i'm playing to win versus when i'm just clicking through the game. For me this is when im testing multiplayer. When i'm testing live against a real person (rather than against the AI), my attitude changes. It forces me to become a player again, not just an all knowing designer.
Conducting play tests is so important for game dev, and its definitely an undervalued skill. I wish I was better at determining what to drill into it and what are good/bad signs.
This is the 3rd version of Hexagod that I've played and its my favorite so far. I like that tiles get bonuses for each adjacent tile now instead of every 2. I like being able to just build whatever I want instead of pulling card packs (although I liked the card packs too, just like this version better). It felt a lot more chill and relaxed. I think feeling like I had more control went a long way to adding to that feeling. Its really cool following along with your development process and I look forward to you videos and updates about Hexagod. So at least for me you're doing something right. Keep it up Aarimous!
Cheers, and thanks for following along and playing the new demo. Means a lot to me and help me know I'm moving in the correct direction.
You are definitely onto something! I find myself playing this demo frequently. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I love that you are willing to make these changes in effort to elicit the best outcome.
Played your demo for the first time last night. Whilst I've watched some of your videos, I haven't watched enough to really know what to expect.
Steam says I played for 2.5 hours.
The first time I played it through, there were a couple of confusing moments, but as I kept playing I started getting more and more into it. Game won't let me have more than 3 villagers? Ok cool, well let's add a whole pile of other things for a while then. At once point I had just enough tiles that my little villagers could alllmost clear them all in a day. So I started being determined to get them all empty, and figuring out the fastest ways to move around the board. That had me hooked for longer than it probably should have.
A couple of things that got me (but for feedback, not complaints. I know it's a demo):
First, I'm vision impaired, so not being able to make any of the menus and text larger was hard for me. Accessibility features like those would be very much appreciated in the final game.
There were a few places I expected to get more info if I hovered, but there wasn't anything, so I just had to kinda figure it out.
The first time the screen started changing colour, it turned orange and red pretty early, I started trying to figure out if I was doing something wrong/maybe my villager was getting tired or something.
Overall though, I had a fun time, and look forward to seeing more. Playing has also made me more interested in following the journey here.
Thx for making these.
Ah, the love for having the omniscient perspective of gaming. I see it from developer, player, and outsider. 20 years of playing, a quarter that developing, and a beta tester for multiple games. Im fairly certain my first game will be fun. I just cant decide whether i want it to be 2 or 3d.
That's exactly why playtest exist 😂❤
Thanks for the video ;)
Thanks for leaving a comment ;)
Yeah I gotta get on this ASAP... 😅
Non-action games have this issue. I'm also having this issue. But i never had anyone play it run after run, I wish I had playtesters that did that :(
Yea, I never know what to get from the stuff I finish
I mean the solution is simple have externale play teastss early and often perferbly all the time if your audncae can handle early builds.
I find it easier to make a test level than balance something for actual players.
If you can't tell it is because you are in a silo and you think you know best what constitutes it being "fun". The truth is, you are not the arbiter of fun, you are it's curator and as it's curator -- you need to curate. Who are you designing this game for? Why do they want to play it? How do they have fun?
For more concrete advice: You need to get this in front of players and playtest, playtest, playtest and STOP developing. Then based on what you learn from that feedback the path should be pretty clear where you need to go next to maximize or restore the fun in your game. Small changes. Incrementally made. Based on feedback. Tweak. Playtest. Adjust. Repeat.
Source: I've published two tabletop games, and am working on my third title. I have raised nearly $200k for all my games on KS, and I have sold over $360k in copies. You can trust my advice. Best of luck to you!