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The Power of Live Demos - What's Good and What's Changing

  • Sgt M
  • 08/01/2016 04:21 AM
  • 470 views
I've learned recently that putting a demo out on the internet is only going to get your so far. I was fortunate enough to bring a demo of the second area of Soma Spirits to the very fun Camp Fangamer in Tucson, Arizona and found that seeing people play the game in person puts things into such a different perspective.

About ten people played the game and response was overall very positive, which was a huge relief for me and instilled a newfound confidence in this project. The feedback for the game's music and art style was very positive and Agent Ape and I are both glad that the sense of charm that I'm going for really hit home with players.

Seeing players of different skills levels go through Box World, the game's second area, gave a lot of insight into what kinds of things I need to change.

Encounter Frequency - Several players felt that combat was too frequent, and I'm inclined to agree. Especially since the demo took place in a dungeon where there were a lot of "choke points"where players were unable to dodge the on-screen encounters, I may have to look at reducing the number of encounter events or change it so that encounters only respawn when you change maps, and not when you shift between the two worlds. Even I felt bogged down seeing players get forced into encounters as much as they did. Regardless of what I decide to do, encounters need to be less frequent.

Targeting enemies
A minor thing I had been meaning to change for a while now. The Enemy Target window was fashioned as 1-column vertical window, whereas the enemies onscreen were arranged horizontally. One player commented that he instinctively was pressing left and right, looking at the monsters rather than the UI. So the target window has been changed to be horizontal with 3 columns:



Clarity
Some clarity issues really popped up in the demo, particularly at the end of the demo when you make that chapter's major choice. A couple of people weren't sure that they had made the decision until they crossed the point of no return. After all, it's not a simple Yes/No answer that branches the story, so I should probably look at places where things are too vague.

All in all, seeing people play the game live was a fun experience. I hope you'll all enjoy the game when it comes out, too!