Here we will give you an update on what we have been up to since our last blog. The holiday season is almost upon us, another year coming to a close, but we keep developing on!
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working hard to prepare for our very first playtest with members of the gaming community. The playtest will take place during these final weeks of November, and we’re eager to gather as much feedback as possible. Your insights will help us refine the gameplay experience and make Towns of Yore even better for our target audience. We can’t wait to see how everyone experiences the game we’ve worked so hard on!
You can find a recap graphic of the closed playtest on our socials but in this blog we will dive a little deeper in the results!
If you would like to be included in future tests of Towns of Yore we advice you to join our discord server.
When a new testing round will be organised this is the place we will post a sighnup sheet!
Join the discord! Click here
We asked playtesters to share their favourite moments in Towns of Yore so far. Our little Eylanders were among the most-mentioned highlights, with around ten shout-outs.
A few examples: "Feeding my neighbors", "I saw two little guys do a handshake while waiting around" and "I saw one of the Eylanders doing a no-hand pushup, which was pretty funny."
We are very glad that the time we put in animations for the Eylanders is appriciated. And let's be honest, what's not to love about the silly little creatures!
Another popular highlight was unlocking new islands, also with about ten mentions. Many playtesters enjoyed this type of expansion.
Some said: "When a new part of the island rose up", "Building my first next island... yay for expansion!!!" and "Raising up a new island from the void."
Players could unlock a new biome after the first Wishstone fell from the sky. We are heppay to see how this feels like a big accomplishment for our players.
Of course, we also want to hear about the things we can improve. We received quite a lot of feedback about the controls, along with suggestions on how to make them more intuitive. We will definitely take all these comments into consideration as we work to make Towns of Yore as comfortable to play as possible.
One topic that came up frequently was jumping. Here are some of the comments we received: "The controls feel very floaty, especially the jump without the dash. In the beginning, I found it difficult to estimate where I would land", "The jumping and movement is simple to operate but it doesnt feel very good" and "Jumping was a bit annoying at times, I think some parts the floor didn't actually exist so it failed, but others it would not react to space being pressed."
We understand how frustrating it can be when your character doesn’t respond the way you want, so we’ll absolutely be working on this.
Another area for improvement is the building controls, which are already a work in progress for our dev-team. We received a variety of comments about this system, such as: "I kind of wished that it wouldve been posible to grab the buildings with the mouse and drop them at the wanted area instead of having to use the built in crosshair and keys for that part", "House rotation wasn't intuitive" and "I had no clue how to erase buildings in build mode." Of course, everyone has different control preferences, but we’ll do our best to improve the system so players don’t feel too frustrated while playing our cozy game!
Another problem might have been the way information has been presented, some testers found it difficult to find.
It will be important for us to take specific notice of these things in our next playtests!
When you’re developing a game, it’s important to make sure it stays fun to play over time. We don’t want people getting bored after just an hour. That’s why we asked playtesters what motivated them to keep playing, and whether there were any moments that made them want to stop.
We learned that many people were motivated to continue playing because they wanted to keep exploring and unlocking new things. Here are some of the comments we received: “To explore more of what the game had to offer, i.e. different houses and job types!”, "I wanted to see what else I could unlock, and expand out the island” and “Unlocking new areas, buildings, glider.”
As gamers ourselves, we definitely relate to this. So who knows what else we’ll add to the game for players to explore and unlock!
Another motivator was the ability to build and decorate. Some of these comments overlapped with the feedback about exploring and unlocking, which shows how all three elements play an important role in the Towns of Yore experience.
Lastly, we found that players value being able to see their progress. There’s nothing more satisfying than noticing how far you’ve come in a game!
Now, onto the moments that made play testers want to stop playing… We were very happy to see eight responses saying they didn’t encounter any such moments, yay! But of course, the game is still in development, so there were some frustrating situations that almost made players want to quit.
We received a few comments about jumping, just like we mentioned earlier in this blog post. Here are some of the other reasons players felt like stopping: “Cutting 50 trees was taking too long. I needed that to have enough sand to get started on making rope”, "How do I increase resident happiness? There seems a connection to the fireflies, but I don't know how to make them happy. This fundamentally blocks my progress” and “Not knowing what resource I was missing to progress. The sand/seeds were not explained in a lot of detail.” This is all extremely valuable feedback for us. We’re already having many team meetings where we go through every comment and take all of them into consideration.
Again it seems like a big part of the problem is information communication, so we will focus on improving this!
That's it for the deep dive into the play test. Here is a different little update!
We’ve been refreshing our social media presence lately, and as part of that, we decided it was time to update our logo. The new version is more recognizable, easier to read, and still very us.
We’ve also created a fun special edition logo featuring one of our cheerful little inhabitants holding up the T and Y, while the Eylander’s mouth forms an O!
We hope you love it as much as we do!
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Would you like to know more about our team or do you have any questions? Click here.
