What a fun couple of weeks. We just wrapped up the playtest and I flew back from gamescom in Germany with a ton of great feedback.
So what did we learn?
Splitting the powers across 3 scientists is fun! Funny data point, the pairing of Toast2 and Dr. Pierre Turner, PhD was the least picked yet the most successful haha. So if you struggled to win, maybe it's easier with Toast2 and Pierre on 0.11?
The biggest issues that came up in the playtest were:
Mods were offered for scientists that weren't in the pair
Oops, that's not fun. We can address the mods by creating pools based on scientists.
The art style needs cohesion
The cartridge readability needs improvement
As many of you have seen, the new scientists and the settings screen look drastically different from the rest of the game and are our first step into aligning all the visuals in a single art direction. We're calling it "toy style" and we can't wait to reveal more with each update. When we revise the cartridges in the toy style, we will also make readability improvements and will seek out your feedback to see if it solved the issues.
At gamescom, we pitched the game to publishers and met fellow devs making roguelike deckbuilders. The feedback was generally positive for the same reasons you love Dream Team Supreme. The things to work on that came out from the talks are:
Strategy isn't deep enough yet
That's a fair assessment. We're adding depth with every cartridge, mod, and monster so looking at every 3 updates is probably a good measuring stick for how much depth we can add to Dream Team Supreme.
The art style isn't uniform
We agree with the art style feedback and the conversion is under way. It will take several months to make it all shine in the new toy style.
Hard to get players to play co-op
What do you think about the co-op comment? We've found that at conventions, players love playing 2 player co-op. At Palmygeddon, co-op was 90% of the playthroughs. We also know that during playtests, only 5% of the playthroughs are co-op. If you have specific obstacles or features in the game that are preventing you from enjoying it in co-op, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
We've released 0.11 on itch.io so you can play it for yourself. Are the issues mentioned above also your biggest gripes or do you feel like something else is holding Dream Team Supreme back?
See ya,
Olivier from Big Adventure