Hello all,
It's been a little bit since our last update, but we've been very hard at work putting a few more pieces of content into the game and polishing and tuning and some other technical pieces we're still putting together to make this game complete.
PAX East was a great show for us. It was nice to see our demo and the latest incarnation of our unique booth drew folks into our jungle.
We tried something at PAX East for the first time - we had a gameplay contest for players. We called it the "One Shot, One Life" challenge. We really liked how it worked out - we probably had 20-30 people take the challenge and all in all 6 people were successful.
The challenge was this - play the game on our hardest difficulty in one attempt, while we watch. Make it to the end of our short demo without dying, and you would win our collector's set of pins.
He have four difficulty levels in the game, which are Interloper, Infiltrator, Spy, and the hardest, Mole. On Mole players do not have the benefit of being able to see enemy sight cones. There's also more guards. And perhaps trickiest of all, only one shot from an enemy will kill you (though depending on how you play they may still capture you instead of executing you immediately).
Difficulty levels have been an important part of the design from early on because, since it's a game that's designed to be replayed, it's important to give players who need more challenge a way to get that challenge. We want players to replay to see all the different scenarios and ways the narrative can play out, yes, but we also want them to engage with the gameplay challenge each time. Having watched the game at so many shows, we know some players find the game challenging as it is, while some really get it and need to be pushed more. And truth be told, the harder difficulties are how we originally thought of the game, and its how we play it when playtesting.
And for PAX East we wanted to see how well players would do when pushed to try our hardest. We encouraged people to practice ahead of time before doing their challenge run. And those skilled six players managed to pull it off. And once we launch, we'll be curious how people take to it. We may even add another difficulty, if people show they need it.
How do you feel about difficulty levels in your favorite Steam games? Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Beyond that, here’s a quick roundup of what the press thought of us:
Game Informer put us on their “Best Indie Games of PAX East” list with some lovely company. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2018/04/07/the-best-indie-games-of-pax-east-2018.aspx
Mike Futter named us one of his Hidden Gems of PAX East in this panel (now-podcast) - take a listen to hear all the interesting games - we come up toward the end. http://ward-games.com/podcast/episode-129-hidden-gems-pax-east-ii/
Waypoint did a nice write up that was quite thoughtful on their experiences checking out the game.
https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/vbxjpj/in-this-cult-themed-stealth-game-the-truth-is-always-changing
All in all a great show - and mega thanks to the Indie Megabooth for having us. But now we’re happy to back to work nailing the final boards into place in our Freedom Town.
And if you've read this far, I'm sure you're waiting for that moment where I tell you when we are shipping. For now, we are sticking with "2018" along with "as soon as we feel it's really, really done" (except for post-launch support of course). We are getting in serious talks with people about our launch, so it is at the top of our minds. Because we've worked on this game long enough, we don't want to get anything wrong as we get so close to the end, and we really can't wait for everyone to play it.
- Richard
