Ahoy crew, welcome below deck!
I'm cutting it fine for a newsletter this month. Last week my family and I were wiped out by illness, as is the current trend in winter with young kids.
We hit another milestone… thank you for 3,000 wishlists! We gained more than 1,000 new wishlists since our newsletter last month when I announced hitting 2K, thanks in no small part to Frosty Fest. We weren't in the actual showcase, but we still enjoyed our best month of growth so far. We still have a long way to go, but it's nice to see some traction building up even in these early stages of development.
The Frosty Games Fest showcase is on YouTube if you want to check out some awesome ANZ indie games. A favourite of mine was the beautifully hand-drawn Apothecurse by Lesser Key Studios in Dunedin.
Keep reading for some insights into the design changes that have been happening over the past month.
Why is the rum gone? Sincerely,
Ben
Demo clip competition winner!
Congratulations to Wade for winning the demo clips competition. We put the best community clips of the Davy Jones' Deckhand demo to a vote in our Discord, and Wade's outrageous overkill clip took the win. I mean look at that damage, the poor crab. Wade's prize was a custom avatar in the style of the game, hand-drawn by our character artist Nik Scarr. Wade's a lawyer, can you tell?
UI rework
After the demo launch madness, I've enjoyed the opportunity to slow down and experiment with some new features, make UI improvements, and build some of the foundations for the next major evolution of Davy Jones' Deckhand. We've been having many discussions with our playtest community on Discord about changes to the UI layout. The biggest change is visible in this comparison image: we've moved enemy HP bars to sit below the enemies.
Watching lots of recorded playthroughs made it clear that the enemy HP bar positioning wasn't intuitive, and sometimes missed entirely. To accommodate this shift the entire ship and horizon line had to be raised upwards, the dashboard with the bell and compass lowered, and the HUD size reduced. The change connects enemies to their key stats more clearly, and brings key info into the centre of the screen.
We also reworked how enemies are highlighted to show their selection and targeted status. Playtests were revealing some cracks in the previous approach, and many players may not have even noticed this change, but that's probably a good thing. We're confident the new colouring and highlighting system is more intuitive and clear.
We've also been discussing the next big UI update: a new and improved HUD. The goal is to simplify and reduce the amount of space it takes up on screen. For instance, the current way of showing which artefacts are from your cargo duplicates those artefacts into both a cargo list and an artefact list, which is unnecessary and easy to simplify. We'll also be reducing the screen space needed for the player HP bar. Here's an early mockup:
Souls currency
The HUD redesign mockup also reveals an upcoming change to the overall currency design of Davy Jones' Deckhand. So far playtesters have been building up coin coffers in their save files, with nowhere to spend that coin. We'll get there eventually. The plan was to allow players to spend coin at merchant ships during voyages, to buy new cards and artefacts for their run. Cards and artefacts are temporary, but leftover coin persists, minus a cut from Davy Jones if you die. That same persistent coin could then be spent outside of voyages on permanent inventory items and upgrades. The fundamental design risk here is that players feel compelled to save their coin for out-of-run permanent upgrades, to the detriment of their current run, meaning players might stop actually spending during voyages, which is no fun! So we're introducing a second currency: souls. This is your temporary, mid-voyage currency, acquired by defeating enemies. The mid-voyage merchant will now be a fellow undead sailor, who trades in souls. All souls remaining at the end of your voyage will be claimed by Davy, so use it or lose it! The latest beta build already has an early implementation of souls, allowing players to spend them on redrawing or skipping their card rewards.
A secret mini-game
I was very near burnout in May, and once I wrapped up work on the demo launch and a big funding application, I needed a change of pace. I didn't want to move straight onto the next "must haves" and was more in the mood for starting something new. The fellow game-devs reading this probably understand this feeling. There's nothing like the excitement of exploring a new idea. Starting something new is a luxury we can't often afford. But I decided to give myself a few days to explore something entirely unnecessary. Call it a holiday.
The first iteration of that something is already in the beta branch for those who can find it. Eventually you'll click on to it.
What next?
I'm now working on the foundations of the mid-voyage merchant. Simon is exploring new HUD designs. We're powering through side-quests like Steam Cloud Save integration and seeded RNG improvements. These are foundations that will serve us well should we receive funding later in the year, propelling us smoothly into full production mode if all goes to plan!
This ended up being a long, wordy newsletter. Thanks for being here, crew!
Until next time me hearties, yo ho!
Ben and the Cass Bay Games Team
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