Once again, it's time for me to chronicle a little more about my workflow on my level, in 300 words or more!
I've been getting good work done on
Deep Freeze over the course of winter break, including a lot of very important polishing that had to be done in preparation for a playtesting session that I did with a friend of mine a week ago, which she streamed. This particular friend wasn't too bad at platformers, but had no experience with Knytt Stories, letting a very interesting light on how the level could be played. Before I go into detail on that, though...
The last time I brought on someone who hadn't had any experience with Knytt Stories (and possibly not a lot of experience with platformers), that person played
abysmally. I couldn't make it through the playtesting footage because of the sheer commonality of failure on things I thought simple - not because I was frustrated at the player himself, mind you, but because I was frustrated at my utter lack of foresight. Even simple quick stair-steppings, jumps that should be simple, timings that should be known - all those were not being applied. Somehow, despite my knowledge on avoiding this issue, I'd managed to make the severe error of assuming the person had already played a few - if not many - levels of Knytt Stories.
The playtester was so frustrated with the level that he likened its difficulty to that of I Wanna' Be The Guy - a completely false statement, but a meaningful one, regardless. It meant that it felt unreasonably hard - that the level was just plain unfair if you didn't already have some of the key muscle memory of Knytt Stories under your belt. I could have made the level easier - could have toned down some of the earlier sections and made that difficulty curve flow a little more smoothly through reduction....
But I didn't. I didn't really even
want to. And I still wouldn't want to. I'm very satisfied with the vast majority of the screens present in Deep Freeze, and, at this point, only some select sections have gotten major difficulty rebalancing because multiple players were dissatisfied with them - and so was I.
So, instead of changing what was already there, I added an
entirely new section to the beginning of Deep Freeze. I won't go into too much detail about it, but the basic thrust of the area was to "train" new players. This section has comparatively small jumps, lots of stair-stepping, the works - it's all about building up a new player's understanding of Knytt Stories.
The main takeaway from my experience with that particular playtester is this: I saw that the level was impenetrably hard for certain players - I added a brand new area.
And so we come to the most recent playtesting of the level. I cleaned everything up, gave my friend the level, and she played it through from start to current-end. And she claimed to enjoy it - though she may have just been sparing my feelings, so I took that comment with a grain of salt. What was most important was seeing how she played. I was a bit surprised at the difficulty the new intro area caused her, but she made steady through it, and it was very evident in her playstyle afterward that she'd taken away the skills I needed her to have for the rest of the level. There were two MASSIVE hiccups in the playthrough - these things were adjusted immediately because they were evidently way too hard and way too specific, and I'd already received complaints about them. So I changed them.
As the playthrough went on, I found myself getting rather in-tune with the way the level should "flow" for a new player - and I realized that this particular playtester was just about to go from one dense puzzle to another, due to the layout of the level. And she did. And she said she wanted more platforming. And I agreed.
So guess what I did
no, guess
That's right, I added
another new section. Well, I say "added" - it's more like I'm currently working on it right now. And that sounds like a bad thing, like
Deep Freeze is going to get pushed even further back because I just cannot stop adding new content, but this particular section is going to be very light on discreet challenges and puzzles - it's going to serve as a break for players, and so, likewise, will serve as a break for me. This section has, so far, been very easy to work on, which is just what I've been needing at this point in Deep Freeze's development.
So, in closing, here's the big, massive thing I learned from watching this playtester: there's a reason people sometimes have little bits of filler or just slightly easier content in otherwise densely-packed games. When you have challenge after challenge after challenge or puzzle after puzzle after puzzle - at least, in this kind of genre - it can result in an internal response that's intensely flow-breaking for the player. They get fatigued - too much consecutive challenge, and they start to lose track of what they're supposed to be doing - they get bored, they get frustrated, they get
worse at the game. And that's no fun at all.
[886 words.]
(And by the way, AbstractMatter - I haven't forgotten about your offer to playtest! I'm just saving that until the level's closer to completion - for the intermediate playtesting I've been doing, I'm trying to stay close to the players.)