We’ve made some great progress refining several puzzles this past month. I’ve done art for new locations and characters, and we attended two live playtest events. We got a lot of great feedback on several puzzles, and have been busy adjusting the puzzles (and some of the UI around them) to make them work better.
Being part of the local game developers communities has been a huge help in making Puzzle Spy international happen. We’re lucky to be in an area where there’s a lot of indie game dev happening and I’m fairly active in the local indie Discords as well as several other game-related Discord servers (for example, the two big ones where people are using – and giving feedback on – games made with the Ren’py engine, which is what PSI uses.) My local indie Discord just hosted a live playtest at a bar/arcade in San Francisco last week, so Talia and I attended and got to watch a bunch of people play PSI. When something isn’t working well, we get to see it with out own eyes and talk to the players about what isn’t working. (And we also hear a fair amount about what IS working too!)
That same local Discord hosts a weekly coworking/problem-solving night so last week I came with a problem that people noticed with one puzzle not accepting input when the shift or capsLock keys were on. Our own programmer couldn’t find the problem, but a few folks offered to check through the code and found exactly what the problem was. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes! And with just a few lines of code changed, now the puzzle works exactly the way anyone would expect it to, and no one playing has to worry about whether they have capsLock on or not.
Another great place to meet up with community are conferences: I don’t attend a lot but never miss the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the big game industry gathering every spring in San Francisco. I’ve been attending for years. Last year I especially loved the Thinky Games MeetUp in Yerba Buena Park in downtown SF. I met the makers of so many other fun puzzle games, including Mini-Metro, ViewFinder, A Tiny Sticker Tale, Surradia, and more. This year the Thinky Games folks told me that they wouldn’t be at GDC so I offered to plan and host the Thinky Puzzle Devs Meetup so that it would still happen. They gave me their blessing so there’ll be another meet-up this year. If you happen to be around SF or the GDC, come by Yerba Buena Park (specifically the Stone Stage) on Thursday March 20 from 10-12. I’ll be there talking about Puzzle Spy with lots of other game-makers!