We have just released an upgraded demo. We believe we fixed all major issues.
But the first version of the demo was out in December, and we were pretty certain we already had a decent game at that moment. But it had a few problems we didn't even know about.
We tested a lot with players to see how well they did. And we think there are a few reasons why we (and sometimes other developers) missed at some points:
- We have been looking at K2 almost every day since late 2022. We do not see our own mistakes.
- Tested people knew they are tested and pay more attention to read popups than regular players (and thus rules were more clear for them)
- testers knew we were developers. And people do not want to hurt your fillings and are more friendly than independent reviewers.
- too few testers - if you have limited resources, there are always too few testers. And you always missed some issue which are
- no time / no money: In software development all projects take twice as long as you assumed. Every single time :) So in a lot of cases you simply do not have money to fix those. Sometimes you already have a release date and you do not have time to work on issues. So you improve after release.
- From the user's perspective it always looks like developers are lazy :) We have experience, but every game is different. And it's why we make mistakes in the process. Simple as that. Hope we are at least learning.
Devon Games is just me and a friend working in our free time. When we realized there is more issues that we expected we simple delayed release date by 2 months (we did not announce it anyway so no damage done)
What have we improved in the demo?
- We actually rewrote the tutorial. Additionally we create micro tasks to give more context for the user
- Improved visibility of the board. Rethink which informations are really needed and slightly modify how we present other
- added extra information how far is to each space and what the shortest path is (see screen below)
- tooltips (will be more)
- tons of small fixes not worth to enumerate them here
- It appears that players love or hate our camera controller. So we add alternative mode (but it is story for completely new devblog)
Play a demo and use the Feedback button!
Let’s create a great adaptation of K2 together.
