Penguin Thoughts #1 - Playtesting and Final Features
Oh hi there, I didn't see you at first. I really should remember to lock the door to my office.
Welcome to the first newsletter by SugoiPenguin Gaming: Penguin Thoughts!
Q: What kind of thoughts are going to be thought in here?
A: This is intended to be a long form companion piece to the Dev Logs for My Liege that I do over on my YouTube, SirBuhlington! Topics I want to ramble about could include:
My Liege design/development
Video game development lessons I learned the hard way
General topics that happen to catch my creative interest (like how is it that Tom Cardy wrote one of my favorite songs about boundaries and self worth?)
Q: Shouldn't you have started this when you originally set out to be an indie game developer?
A: Sure, but I sometimes like to do things a little out of order.
Q: Aren't you worried that this question/answer format for your first newsletter is going to get old really quick?
A: Yes
With that said, thank you very much for checking this out! You did something when you didn't have to which is already amazing. If you subscribe, I will do my best to make it worth your time (or at the very least, allow you to feel sophisticated for reading rather than doom scrolling for the 3rd straight hour).
So let's address the elephant in the room for anybody that somehow got here without knowing what I'm cooking.
What is a My Liege?
My Liege is a medieval choose your own adventure RPG, except instead of putting you in charge of the kingdom you are instead the Lord of the smallest house in the Western Valley. You are desperately trying to improve your houses standing, however you have to balance the needs of many different groups. Good luck keeping the needy nobles, impoverished peasants, and your liege High Lord happy while you pursue your own goals.
On to the reason for issue #1!
Playtesting!
During the month of January, I had a lovely group of play testers play the full game. It was the first time that I had a full build of the game with all of the story acts so I was pretty excited to get feedback on the full product. As I worked on the final features, I worked with them on bugs both big or small.
Quick stats from playtesting:
6 unique "hard errors" or "soft locks" discovered where the game became unplayable (all fixed)
66 bugs reported1
19 story elements that need improvement
25 ideas for improvement
4 major updates pushed out for testers to check out
6 minor updates to fix the 6 major errors
1 very happy and tired developer
You hear how important playtesting is in the development process, doubly so for video games. I believed it, but now I KNOW it, you know?
1Uh oh, that is too many 6’s in a row
The biggest lessons I have learned through all of this
My writing process was a bit flawed. The first 2 acts I used a piecemeal approach where I would write the dialogue in normal English, then use a translator app to turn it into old English, and THEN rewrite it to fit my format. Turns out, all of those steps were hella error prone. In the later acts, I was more comfortable with the old English vocab I was willing to use so I was able to go from outlined prompts/dialogue/decisions to final draft verbiage in one smooth step. What is the lesson? Probably something about "Hey, remember when you said you were a bad writer? It just took some practice and you found a better way to do it!" but that sounds like my therapist talking.
Watching other people play the game is most informative. You get to witness how they interact with the product and it really shines light on areas of the game that you as the developer were glossing over. All feedback is good feedback, but witnessing the struggles player have in the moment is the most honest version.
I probably should have done this more often. Specifically, I should have had more playtesting prior to the Steam Next Fest I participated in back in June 2023.
Final Features
I have said "this is the last major feature I'm adding" multiple times, but this time it is true. I have more than enough bugs to fix prior to launch and I believe that a highly polished and finished product will be better than shoehorning more and more content in. With that said, the last month saw me finally get to multiple areas:
Lighting and Graphics
For the longest time the game just simply had that "default Unity 3D" project look to it. After updating the render settings and adjusting the lighting to my preferred look, the game feels so much better to me. I hated it at first, but that was simply because it was different from what I was used to. After a day, I was converted.
Audio
I had music, I had a few UI sounds, but it was very quiet most of the time. Now I have gone around and 90% of the things that should make sound now make sound. It makes the world feel better and graduated from "babies first game" to "teenagers first game".
UI
The UI rework was the most minor of this list, but my original implementation was pretty safe. I tinted things and rounded the button corners but it still very much looked like old Windows. After giving it a facelift, now my buttons have a bit of design to them. The scrollbars are modeled to feel medieval. The sliders... well they just got a wax seal for a handle... not that impressive but helped!
With these changes, I'm feeling quite good about where I am at with the game build. Now I get to focus my energy on items like this, redoing the steam page to match the final product, work with graphic designers on branding... finish recording trailers... contact members of the media....... oh boy... I'm gonna be a tired Penguin...
On that note, that is all for this newsletter! I'm going to shoot for once a month, usually about My Liege, sometimes not. Thank you for joining me on this journey and take care of each other!
-Addison aka your friendly local penguin2 developer
2Not a real penguin. I know, I am crushed too