Indiecade East Feedback
I just got back from New York City. Manifold Garden was showing at Indiecade East, as part of the Sony PlayStation 4 section.
I received some really great feedback from this last showing, both in terms of how to refine world 001 and how to set up the pacing for the entire game.
There were two playtest sessions that really stood out to me.
(SPOILER ALERT)
In the first, the playtester had found her way outside in world 001 after solving the initial indoor puzzles. She had lit up one the first laser beam, and had more or less figured out that she needed to get to the other islands and light up the laser beams there.
However, even though she knew where they were, once she got to them, she wasn’t able to orient herself correctly to access the entrance. This was because she wasn’t approaching the island from the center tower, so she would land on the “side” of the island. Because she kept landing on the exit door, which didn’t have a surrounding ledge, there wasn’t a surface for her to orient herself correctly. As such, she kept falling off and getting frustrated.
This was unnecessary frustration. She had already solved the basics of the outside puzzle, in that she knew what she needed to do. The problem she was facing was an execution one, which is not in line with the goals of the game.
The solution is to simply add a ledge around the exit room. This provides a surface for the player to rotate onto to correctly orient themselves with the entrance room.
In the second playtest session, I had gone out to lunch, and had come back to see the playtester had made it to about the 4th world (which means he had been playing for about 1 hour). I asked if he had started from the beginning, and he said, yes, and then I asked him what he thought of the game. At this point, he didn’t know I was the developer. The gist of his feedback was: the puzzles were good (he was obviously engaged having played the game for about 1 hour), thought the architecture was cool, but was starting to wonder why he was solving the puzzles. What was the purpose?
He explained that he wasn’t a puzzle game player normally (he had played Portal only), so for a puzzle game to really grab his attention, it needs something more than puzzles.
This was very helpful information for me. While Manifold Garden doesn’t have an explicit narrative with characters or voiceover or text, there is an implied one. There is mystery to be discovered. What this playtest session informed me, is that I need to introduce this mystery within the first hour.
The puzzles and architecture are clearly engaging enough that even a non-puzzle game player will play for an hour. However, at that point, they are starting to wonder why they are spending their time doing this when they could be playing something else. The prospect of more puzzles as a reward is not enough. There needs to be a sense of purpose.
I had the beat where the mystery is introduced, but not until 1.5 or 2 hours in. Now I know I need to move it up and introduce it earlier.
Personnel Change
An update on the situation, since some people have been asking questions.
David Laskey is no longer working on Manifold Garden.
In the end, things just didn’t work out, and I decided to look for a new programmer.
New Programmer Search
The search for the new programmer is going well. It’s been very busy. So far, I’ve gotten about 60 applicants. This was quite surprising to me, as I only posted about the job on twitter for a few times, and didn’t put it on any job boards.
It has been incredibly time consuming going through all the emails and resumes, scheduling interviews, checking references, etc. Last week I got very little done in the way of actual work.
I hope to finalize everything within either this week or next week.
I’ve also learned a tremendous amount about the hiring and job application process. One day I will write a more detailed blog post about.
Moving Forward
This week I’ll be adding in the feedback I received from Indiecade East. I’m now at a point in the development of the game where I need to start thinking about launch. I need to start looking into logistics of releasing the game – setting up infrastructure for beta testing, setting up a steam page, etc.
To be honest, things have been quite difficult without a programmer. My estimate is that I’ve lost about 6 months of work-time (taking time away to do interviews, working with inefficient tools, legal overhead, the new programmer having to catch up on codebase, etc). It’s very possible this will push back my original planned release date, but I just have to make the best out of my situation.
I am still able to work with existing tools to create new levels and test out pacing in the game, so that is what I will be doing in the next few weeks. I’ll be meeting up with the design club here in Chicago soon to go over what I have planned.
This summer is going to be a super busy one, but I’m looking forward to getting into a cycle of iterating and playtesting.