Hi everyone,
I wanted to spend a minute to talk about how Punch Club will benefit from the whole Twitch Plays experiment. In the midst of this crazy launch (currently just around 1k people playing at http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspunchclub ) we forgot to mention one important thing.
The game isn't done yet. Before it gets pushed live we are doing an important balancing update which is based on everything we're seeing in the Twitch Plays Punch Club livestream.
This includes balancing of the progression system, enemies, and random events that happen.
SPOILERS BELOW! Can't talk about specific game design things without spoiling some of the story
Back in October we started beta testing (as you can see in earlier forum posts), and the first 3 hours of Punch Club were incredibly fun. Then, after an important plot point, we saw people losing interest. It became a grinder game and wasn't as fun.
So we started to add-on more mechanics. These include the random events like going out to bars, having to manage your social life (your girlfriend) and also the late game events.
With the closed betas we were able to get the game to 95% of where it needs to be. Now, we're sitting watching the chat play, and realizing what kind of moments players will enjoy most -- figuring out ways for them to happen more often. Adding so much content late in the game's development cycle, coupled with a very tight schedule, makes testing incredibly difficult.
We're also cautious about players getting stuck. In these style of games, it's important for the player not to end up in an endless loop. So if anyone can get stuck, it's the Twitch chat.
I take responsibility for unclear initial communication, as it could seem to some that the game was out, and then wasn't. This, in combination with lack of explanation on the pre-launch update, can make us come off as some evil game company.
We're going to add ourselves in the game as NPCs that you can beat up.
What if Twitch never beats the game?
While this is very unlikely, our plan B is to play the game ourselves in the chat and make sure it doesn't release later than January 25th -- aligning with PAX South.