12/14/22

Time Worked: 2:16 - 4:06 PM

Total Time: 1 hr, 28 mins

Hmm. Today I'm having a bit of a dilemma.  The problem is that I am fixing bugs, etc and trying to improve gameplay. As I worked on aiming and moving, I realized the environment is small and hard to get around in. The size of the environment impacts many things and has stuck out to me as something that need to be expanded. I think just from playing it so much and feeling like there's just not much to it. And it's true that there are a lot of things left to implement, and that has been on my mind and holding me back from just increasing the size. 

Basically I don't want to get ahead of myself and make sure I take care of stuff that needs to be done. However, I just really have a feeling that there is not enough gameplay time in this prototype to really get a feel for much. I also worked on making the game less difficult today by messing with the isometric controls as well as the rate at which enemies shoot, and adjusting player health. I am shooting for more boring rather than more difficult this time around, so that players can actually play the game.

Thinking about it, I think a short game need not be challenging. A player probably won't even have enough gameplay time to think "this is too easy", and the novelty of the fact that it is a new experience will at least motivate early players. If it's too hard they will not even get a chance to check out the gameplay features.

In fact, what modern game has the player die in the first 30 seconds of playing? None. So I'm going to aim for too easy for now until I get the complaint of "it's too easy".

Anyway, this also points to a longer gameplay loop for this prototype. If the game is easy, players can spend less time dying, which means they have more time to check out opening doors, shooting things, seeing how satisfying or not satisfying the experience of playing is.

Also a driving thought right now is that my goal is to test the gameplay idea. Right now they are testing technical issues and I don't want anybody doing that but me. The technical issues can be distracting, but right now there's not really much for them to distract the player from. Not only this. When I did have people play, they only played for a minute or two. It's possible that part of the reason is because they can clearly see there is nothing else to the game. If there are more rooms and things they can explore, they may be compelled to do so.

Alright, next playtest: I'm going to bore my players. I'm going to make the game big enough and easy enough that they quit because they are bored, not because they are dead.