Daily Report: 02/12/2023 (Patreon)

First feedback

Or first actual playtest

Yesterday it was finally time for our first playtest. I think I speak for everyone that the result so far has been way more positive than expected. Probably because we are all very familiar with the various flaws and bugs our game had, or because we only added a bunch of pretty substantial features only mere hours before our actual playtest build went live.

Regardless, the reception has been quite positive, with people liking the general combat and gameplay. Some points that come back most often (in order of importance are):

• Weightless combat, and pacing is still a bit off
• Item pickups are unclear (SFX/VFX) and people want them to be more      automatic it seems
• Rooms are too repetitive
• Art isn’t there yet (we expected this)
• SFX are wack

Things that people like are the setting and music, seems a lot of western audience is also still interested in the Chinese setting. In the end we need to keep in mind that a lot of feedback point can be a bit garbage (“use genAI instead of pixel art for more detail” Clearly the guy has never published on Steam since it’s not allowed there), but most of them are actually surprisingly solid and structured this time

It’s still a bit too early, but I would love to see how this latest devlog + playtest has influenced our wishlist numbers, I’ll get an update on that in a few days. Our devlog also performed surprisingly good, for a rushjob edit I did in a single day, along with a 7 minute start to finish thumbnail creation. For context, we are currently still sitting at an 8.1% CTR (Click Through Rate), whilst we usually get around 4 - 4.5%

What’s next
Let’s take another day to gather some feedback, and then next week look at what our priorities should be from there. The past few days have been a bit crunchy to get everything in order for our playtest.

" There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” - Aristotle

Marnix Wyns

Producer & Creative Director @ BiteMe Games