v0.17 is released. But first, a story.

Today, I got the opportunity to watch some people play my game in person! Two were gamers, two were not. I specifically did not want to only request for people who've played games before. I wanted to see those who did not.

The interesting thing about watching non-gamers play is that you get to really see how good your onboarding process is...or how bad it is. Haha!

I watched painfully as they struggled to figure out where to get certain resources, or figure out how to accomplish the objectives, while having to keep silent and not say anything, observing to see if they would figure out.

It was enlightening and I wrote SIX pages worth of observations/feedback/improvements.

Yes, I'm old school and jot on my notebook instead of a device. As a result, I spent the entire night dedicated to just improving the onboarding process and dedicated an update purely for it.

The biggest thing I learnt:

The game is a frantic, intense one. Even though the peaceful period has no danger, the count down timer ticking down, combined with the sky turning cloudy to signal the approaching storm makes people panic and try to rush. In doing so, they feel too stressed to read or understand certain information and objectives. This creates a chain reaction where they feel too pressured to explore and understand what the different buildings, which in turn makes the game confusing.

While I like the intense franticness of the storm and how dramatic the storm is, I don't like how people feel like they have to rush even during peaceful phases. Three solutions in order of minor to drastic revamp of the game design:

1) Add a timer-less tutorial stage

Let players build in an environment without timers, so they can read and build at their own pace with no worries. Resources are super fast to get. The goal is to get 20 of every early-game resource and build to 20 meters. At the end, a simple storm appears, showing what it does. They are then teleported to the real game. This functions like a sandbox mode with no consequence.

Pros: No stress. Own pace to figure out game mechanics. The goal to figure out how to get 20 of each resource is a fun(?) challenge in itself even without the storm.

Cons: Many players knowingly skip tutorials and jump straight into the game. “Tutorial? SKIP!” Tutorials have a negative connotation to being boring and unrewarding. I personally skip them too and in here, it is worse because everything you build in the tutorial has to be reset.

My thoughts: This is the top suggestion so far brought up, I just don’t know if people would actually play it fully as it takes awhile to learn and tutorials that don’t transition to main game just suck. Personally not a fan of tutorials that don’t transition to real game, feels like the game wasted my time. But maybe simplest solution is best?

How to counter the con: Make this tutorial an actual story campaign. Make it a prologue mission with a story objective! You start at a seatown, preparing supplies to go out to sea on a mission to investigate Faraday’s disappearance: 

"I need 20 of each resource to build my supply boat” (upon completion, cutscene shows you cruising toward Faraday’s Sea-lab until a strange anomaly forms in the distance…you hear lightning and screen cuts to black. u wake up, your boat crashed and that’s how u end up stranded with an approaching storm! CUE STORMBRIDGE LOGO + CINEMATIC CRESCENDO. Transition into the real game and timer starts!). 

This explains why your tutorial prologue progress is wiped. Furthermore, completing this story unlocks a pet or journal entry. So you feel like u gained something and not just lost time + it gives context to the game genre/concept + hook player with story with the end goal to find Faraday, the missing scientist to stop the storm (plot twist: He is the Storm).

2) Let players build the first 10 meters with no timer

The timer only starts counting down after building the 11th bridge OR after picking the 10th card. To prevent idling for resources, all items are capped at 10 storage until you start the timer.

Pros: Same as #1. Additionally, when the timer appears, it also teaches players the timer.

Cons: Abusable - You'd wait for all 10 cards to be given to "maximize" gains and get desired buildings unlocked, then build one of each building, idle to 10 steel, 10 vegetables, 10 teriyaki. Then finally trigger the timer to start. Not a fun way to play.

3) Get rid of the storm timer. Allow players to summon the storm anytime.

This turns Stormbridge into an idle/cozy game, but this is better than I thought. It allows players to adapt the game to their own difficulty preference. Players who want a challenge can give themselves a challenge. Players who want to play on peaceful mode forever - they can do that too, and then summon the storm when they feel comfortable! There's a reason why people asked for sandbox mode in my previous game and difficulty settings - people don't want the game to decide how hard/easy it should be for them - they want to decide. And say bye to negative reviews calling your game too easy/difficult! You are the player, you decide how you difficult you want the game to be!

So why summon the storm?

The storm will be the only source of "Metallic Fragments", a resource similar to steel and essential to progress your civilization. The earlier you summon the storm, the more fragments you get.

Sure, some people will overfarm and summon the storm super late and overkill it - but if people like overkilling, I think that is fine. The drawback is they get less fragments - I think this is incentive enough to want people to push for better timings, without being forced to fight the storm earlier than they're comfortable to.

The second biggest thing I learnt:

The tutorial has to guide them to build wood farms, as wood is essentially the most important resource. If it does not, the player is set up for failure. Thus the tutorial has changed to instruct building 2 Wood Farms instead of Berry farms.

The last thing I learnt:

Take a photo! Because now I do not have any cool shots of them playing the game to put in this dry post! :(

Because of this development, there will be no pets released in this update as I have spent the entire day on improving the early game. I hope the new player experience will be more worthwhile. I still have to think of which solution to choose from above.

Anyway, here's the update changelog for v0.17:

• - Add new tutorial panels

• - Objective now tells you to build wood farm instead of berry farm
• - Cards will guarantee Wood Farm and House if objective requests it
• - Add Hover effect on buildings
• - Default camera zoom changed: 7 -> 5
• - Wood Farm moved from [Food] to [Base] tab
• - Settler card icons changed to match settler visuals and quantities

• - Stormblowers and attractors cannot be built during the storm
• - Item panels are bigger when there are fewer items
• - Reduce item fly speed: 3500 -> 2000
• - Add language selection

Reflections:

At the end of it all, this was an encouraging and delightful experience. I am glad that even the testers who did not play games managed to eventually figure things out, but I know the onboarding can be so much better. I want this game to be understood even by players not familiar with the genre. It's a tall order. I want to work on content, but I will also simultaneously roll out updates to improve the onboarding process. This is the first phase of that, and I will continue to refine the beginning of the game!