#8 Devlog: Alpha Test Results
Hello everyone,
This month we had our first ever alpha playtest and Henrik has made a great summary of our learnings and where we go from here. Enjoy!
About the Alpha Version
We did an alpha test of GrimKeep during August. We invited around 50 people, who selected primarily on the basis of them being fans of the roguelite and deckbuilder genres. For an intense two weeks, they played GrimKeep with no particular instructions other than "please play our game". We're extremely grateful to everyone who took the time to play and report feedback. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
The test version contained most of the gameplay features and content we think/thought the game needs for launch. The biggest things missing from the game at that point was a larger set of random encounters, and the player directed progression system (more on that below).
The game version at the time had around seven encounters, and we have since added a lot more. David made a tool that makes it easier to implement new ones, so going forward the process of adding more will be much smoother.
A Note on Player Progression
In terms of the progression system, I called it "player directed progression" earlier, as we already had one progression system in place, but it wasn't apparent to the player. The game has 180+ items that you can use to build your own strategies, but not all of those items are available from the start. The unlock system works by having a starting pool of items where items are drawn at random as post-combat rewards. Once you reach the second map, they're also drawn from a pool tied to that map. Any items you put in your inventory will be 'unlocked', i.e. part of the starting pool. The more you play and use items, the more of them will be available when you start a run. This gradually expands your possible synergies.
At this point, we're almost done with the player directed progression. This is a somewhat traditional earn-points-and-unlock-upgrades system, but we're adding more player involvement by letting you decide which upgrades you take into a run. These can be set per character too, so you can tweak each of the characters to their strengths. Personally, I'm very curious to see how this will be perceived by all of you in the future!
Our skill system - work in progress
Alpha Results
Okay, let's get back to the alpha. We're very pleased with the results! It's been very valuable to see the many, many small details that testers found and gave feedback on. I won't go into that big pile of notes, but we will try to address as many as we can before launch.
There were also some larger findings. I think one of the biggest was in regards to the availability of healing. Some players felt that they had access to so many healing potions and similar that they were rarely concerned about health. We've already tweaked this and will make further changes to better balance it soon, but there's also a bit of a conundrum here. The perception of 'too much health recovery' could potentially also mean that enemies are defeated too easily, at least to a degree. And we know from internal tests and playtester data from players that never beat the game (or even half the game), that there are many who would find the game too challenging.
This is the big challenge: keeping the game difficult enough for the top players, and also not too challenging for new players. Please comment or join our Discord to share your thoughts on this.
We'd love to discuss some version of "NewGame+", i.e. when you beat the final boss, the game becomes more challenging the next time you play. This has the potential to let the game self-balance the challenge in order to suit a larger range of players. Also in combination with some new-user-experience tweaks and making the game easier in the early maps and harder in later maps, will probably let more people enjoy GrimKeep.
Where We Go From Here
The best thing to come out of the testing is that we feel that the general game design is validated. Fans of the genre did have a good time. Good enough to play thoroughly and many times over, while analyzing all the different parts of the game.
At this point, we're on the home stretch. A demo of the game is in the works, and we'll likely have a beta before launch. We'll let you know as soon as we do, so you can experience GrimKeep for yourself!
Let's get this baby over the finish line!
See you on the internets,
/Henrik & team
