Hey everyone, and happy Knowledge Day!
If only a bit unexpected, this summer turned out to be very intense for us. Barely notable changes led to big breakthroughs, while the smallest features sometimes took weeks (9 weeks, actually) to implement and polish. Oh well, that's game development for you.
More cool stories and new SuperWEIRD content await below, but first:
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Back to the game now! We spent a good amount of time playtesting the first 20 minutes of the web version of the game. Certain web platforms allow testing your game with a wide audience of random players, which was a great way for us to make sure that SuperWEIRD is fun from the very beginning.
We’ve been running blind playtests, and last week we finally managed to cross the 10-minute average playtime threshold! For comparison, at the beginning of July, we started with 2:30 minutes.
That period is codenamed “berserk mode” in our internal docs. It means releasing a new version daily, while our standard rhythm is one per fortnight. Pretty weird for us, but sometimes even the smallest tweaks led to surprising results.
For example, making the robots spawn and walk slower gave us a few minutes of extra playtime - perhaps due to the game becoming less hectic. Optimizing performance also gave us a significant playtime boost - most likely because web games are frequently played on older and less powerful devices.
Making the prototype playable for more people was a good idea. And a great lesson for us, too, as all our games have an educational angle, and we therefore try to make them as accessible as possible (that includes browsers, too). So this part is now covered, thanks to our “berserk mode”.
Other tricks that proved helpful? Introducing one feature at a time, not being afraid to repeat the same steps, and showing one mechanic (like construction) in different contexts. Also, avoid action chains with more than one step during the first minutes of the game.
Crossing the 10-minute threshold was an important challenge for us - partially because it is mandatory for releasing on certain web platforms. Now that it's out of the way, we have time for some real juicy stuff! But first, here are a couple of videos to illustrate how much the game has changed throughout the summer:
Since the game was re-invented from a store management/tower defense game into a robot management/boss fighting game, we kinda lost the other characters for a while.
But we promised you pigs in shades, so they were not forgotten! The current loop is that you save them from bosses and provide them a lot to build a house upon - in return, they will award you with all kinds of bonuses, such as new commands, new flag types etc.
Another big thing for us is to work out the structure of the game world. At the moment, the idea is that it will consist of a bunch of smaller locations, connected with portals, allowing the player to establish the lines of robots between locations. Think of planets from Dyson Sphere Program or platforms in Shapez 2, if only on a smaller scale.
This relatively quiet time gives us an opportunity to conduct some smaller experiments: for example, making the player to craft items on workbenches instead of automated production. Or introducing a limited stack of items for the player, with an opportunity to upgrade. Or starting off with robots crafting axes before swords and shields, to add more depth to earlier parts of the game. Will it make things better? We'll see when we try it!
The base gameplay is now in place, the game structure is soon to be detailed, and we're heading for the first playtest at full speed! Don't forget to sign up on SuperWEIRD Steam page to ensure you'll get the message when the playable build is out there!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3818770/SuperWEIRD/
How to Follow SuperWEIRD?
To make sure you don't miss a big event (such as playtesting), you can do a number of things:
- Follow our YouTube channel for the latest news from development
- Subscribe to our mailing list to get in-depth stories about the game
- Join our Discord to chat with us directly
- Add the game to wishlist (push the button on the widget below)
Stay awesome, stay SuperWEIRD!