Ahoy maties! Did you miss us? 🦜🏴☠️
We've had a lot of discussions about how the playtest went and the areas where we need to improve. Today, we're here to share some of those insights with you. 🌟🌟
First of all, thank you for participating! The playtest reached far more people (CREWMATES!!!) than we anticipated. And your feedback has shown us exactly where we are and where we need to head next.
(A quick note before we dive in: you might not have encountered some of the issues we're discussing. We continuously updated the game throughout the playtest, making the final build much smoother than the first. However, to make sure no feedback is left behind, we are addressing everything from day one.)
We gathered feedback under some topics:
Tutorial📝: This is the first thing that caught our attention. Our tutorial was loose and long. It didn't teach you anything, you can fail it easily and it was taking too long to let you go into more exciting part of the game. We will make it short, instructive and more exciting.
Fishes 🐟: This was the most frequent request. Why there is so much fish?! Delete them! DELETE THEM ALL!!! We feel you maties but lets not obliterate them just yet. We think this was a balance issue. There shouldn't be this much fish and they shouldn't hide rest of the mechanics like cannonball holes or fires. Actually let talk about it in the next topic.
Balance & Difficulty Issues⚖️: Since this was the playtest, we put bunch things without finding enough time to test them. Problems like fish mayhem, meaningless mechanics, level timer shortage etc. came from that. But now we know where to focus, how to change the game design. Demo will be more refined and balanced.
Lack of Dynamism⚡: Our gameplay feels static and repeatable. Ship gameplay becomes the constant loop of carrying the cannonball and firing the cannon over and over. Enemy ships doesn't move or change patterns. Also, because of the fish incident, rest of the mechanics couldn't fulfill their purposes and failed to provide gameplay variety.
Brain-dead Goblins 🥴: This is also a subtopic of lack of dynamism but since it affects all treasure hunt levels, lets talk about it separately. Dumbness is okay with ship levels, but in the treasure hunt, fighting against endless wave of goblins is gets boring quickly. Rather than keep coming at random players, they should protect the chests, position themselves better and chase the players who grabs the chest.
Difficulty in Control Scheme 🎮: Within all the chaos, controls shouldn't be an obstacle for the players. But if you cannot aim the bucket to the fire properly or grabbing the stupid fish while trying to grab the cannonball or trying to interact with cannon can feel terrible. We know the pain and everything will feel smoother in the demo.
Bug Fixes & Polish 👾: A few elements you saw were just placeholders, like the endgame and loading screens. These will be fully updated for the demo. We've also logged all your bug and performance reports (STEAM DECK, I AM COMING FOR YOU!).
Rest assured, there is much more to come! We have a lot planned, but for this post, we want to focus on addressing your feedback and general concerns. If you think we missed anything, please let us know. You can reach us on our community Discord or start a discussion on Steam.
Thank you for your support and see at the demo!!