The very first playtest has come and gone!
Being the very first one there was a lot I learned, a lot of wonderful feedback and tons of bug reports! All of that is very exciting when building Kingdom Flipper alone, and now it’s almost time for the second playtest.
This was my first time running a playtest for Kingdom Flipper. As a solo developer, one of the biggest challenges is getting feedback. Not just any feedback, but enough of it to make significant changes with players' wants and needs in mind.
The good news? I have made a ton of changes, and even more that I’ve learned from this process!
No small task. I used a mix of Steam's own playtest tool, a Google form, social media, and Reddit to find my new players. Slowly but surely, a group of awesome folks joined Discord and began reporting bugs and leaving feedback.
A lot of it! Like, a Google Sheet worth of it!
It was both humbling and incredibly helpful moving forward. Since the first playtest, I’ve been able to fix multiple bugs and have looked into implementing other feedback. I hear you about painting and cleaning!
Speaking of bug fixes, here’s what’s been fixed:
Bug fixes
- Fixed tutorial quests causing soft locks and hard locks
- Fixed debris and cleaning blocking some repair jobs
- Weird glow on ceiling tiles fixed
- Fixed progress not saving on quests. Dev note: Such a small sentence for the hours of tearing my hair out and guzzling coffee to try to find where the slipped variable was in the overly intricate save system. That was nice. Then I got to change that variable in every single quest and job, including rewriting all the tutorial quests. Actually, it was two variables and I had to change a bunch of stuff in each job and quest to make them work correctly. So you want to be a game dev too? It's fun!
- Treasure chests were not giving gold. I think that the vizier giving quests was stealing it. Well, his plot is foiled because you now get gold from chests.
- Fixed the issue with being able to change labels on the hotbar. Sorry, if you need Build to read Fuzzy Bubbles you'll have to petition on Discord.
- Words no longer run away over the edges of the quest boxes.
- No cheese? Not anymore! Fixed cheese icon not appearing.
- Tutorial cleaning will always have bubbles and no longer disappear.
- The loading game menu now scrolls correctly.
- Minor UI issues fixed.
- Fixed Job counters not resetting to zero.
- Fixed stone stairs not lining up correctly.
Additions
- Added photo mode! Take awesome pictures and show off your builds UI free!
- Added a rude “Not Enough Gold” pop-up. (might be too rude)
- A bunch of new carpets were added, expanding the selection.
- Treasure chests were added to all levels. Happy treasure hunting!
Misc changes
- Began organizing materials for consolidation and remastering for better performance.
- The valuation system for castles works every time now.
- The inner curve of the roof and floor now snap correctly.
- Trees no longer morph when you hit them and now fall apart as expected.
- Tutorial-level walls now have consistent textures.
- Removed the first quest to avoid confusion.
- Removed some menu options and renamed them to Save Game.
- Adjusted walls to correct z-banding when on the same tile
And there you have it!
There is of course always more to be done so I am continuing to work on fixes and improvements you’ll see during the next playtest. When is that you wonder? The next Kingdom Flipper playtest begins in early December and will run nearly two weeks - keep an eye out I’ll have more news on that very soon.
Thanks again for all the reports and for jumping into Kingdom Flippers' very first playtest! Can’t wait for the next one.
- BP👑
