Design - Week 5 and Playtest Report

This Week:

• Wrote at least 1 new skill for every party member except Candy Kid
• Introduced Passive Skills to the game
• Worked out the system for enemy stats and skills
• Created all skills for the Sleeping Constable

Goals for next week:

• Start developing intentionally designed synergies for both players and enemies
• Flesh out the mechanics of specialized enemies in chapters 4-8
• Write dialog for chapters 2-4 at least
• Evaluate balance by testing the current build

Playtest Report 11/7:

• By far the part that players were most confused by was the lack of information on the character select screen. Allowing players to access as much information as possible about each of their party members from this screen would allow for more opportunities for critical thinking and improve the experience.
• By this point, the turn system is fairly intuitive. Players were able to consistently figure out which character's actions they were selecting by looking at the Initiative order on the UI, because the current character was the only one whose icon was completely opaque.
• Players were confused with the importance of Inspiration. Early on, there seems to be no disadvantage to moving first whenever possible. Ideally, later fights will introduce mechanics that punish players for abusing speed advantage too much.
• The mechanics of status effects proved difficult for players to keep track of. One tester suggested to create an indicator for each status that could be displayed next to the character on the field.
• Players less experienced with RPGs didn't understand why certain attacks weren't doing the exact damage their base power suggested. This can be fixed by adding information about base stats to the character select screen.
• The balance in the build that we tested was slightly off due to an error on my part. While character and enemy base stats had been updated to fit current balance, the base damage of attacks had not, and thus every attack from both sides felt extremely weak. In future updates, I will prioritize balance and heavily evaluate damage calculation.