Hello to all the fans of building, modeling, and creating!
I need to update you on the current situation because, even though not much time has passed since the last post, a lot has happened. Really, a lot!
Let me start by saying that last month I wrapped up the first version of the demo. I was very pleased with the result and sent it to a professional tester.
However, my enthusiasm didn’t last very long. A few days later, I received a gameplay recording. That video turned out to be the most emotional footage I’ve ever seen in my life, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot of movies. The death of Mufasa, the opening of Finding Nemo, or Up were all incredibly impactful on me, but none of them could compare to the video showing someone’s first interaction with Outside the Blocks. I’ll admit it openly: during the scene where the tester spent 30 minutes struggling to place a simple window, more than one tear rolled down my cheeks.
The tester’s final review was rather lukewarm. While the visuals were appreciated, many aspects seemed unclear, and several features were never discovered at all.
That was the moment I realized there was still quite a bit of work ahead of me. I made a detailed list of all the problems and minor bugs, which totaled slightly over 30 items. Naturally, I addressed and fixed every single one of them, but the biggest upgrade was yet to come.
I needed to add a tutorial.
Wow! The game needs a tutorial — what a surprise?!
Well, no, it wasn’t a huge surprise. But honestly, I’d been holding out hope for a long time that the game would stand on its own. I always wanted Outside the Blocks to be so intuitive and simple that it wouldn’t require any explanation. I wanted every player to look at the icons and say, “Got it, let’s build some dioramas.”
And surely, there will be players like that! But I didn’t want my reluctance to stop players who prefer to understand something before they start playing.
I worked on the tutorial nonstop for over a week.
A few days ago, I sent it to a small group of people to see how it fared this time. And… it’s hard to describe what happened as anything other than a success! The general feedback seems much more positive:
The game is more complex than I thought it would be based on the video, but that’s because it offers so many possibilities.
There were 2-3 points where the instructions were less clear than they should have been, and a few minor bugs were found. It looks like no major overhauls are needed anymore. I’m moving forward, analyzing, learning, and improving. Hopefully, I’ll be able to release the demo to the public soon.
Keep your fingers crossed, and see you in the next Steam post!