This week, the team went to GDC and brought the game to playtest. Here is some feedback that stood out to us!

• Players want more knockback on enemies as they find the combat too difficult overall.
• The steam visual effects on the pipes are confusing; there’s not enough feedback to indicate whether it’s active or not.
• Players like the Hum upgrade system and want to see more of it.
• More sound effects are needed in the game, particularly to enhance the combat experience.
• It’s suggested that no new systems should be added to the game before finals. Instead, the focus should be on polishing the existing demo to 100% done and a real beautiful corner.
• Players need more landmarks in the level to guide them effectively.
• Losing progress on candles and needing to re-unlock powers feels frustrating.
• Visual feedback is needed when obtaining a candle. Something animated should fly to the top-left corner to refill the light, guiding players’ attention towards it.
• General and repeated positive feedback on the visuals, shadows, and “vibes”
• Players are having trouble noticing points of interest ie valves, enemies, the furnace.
• Combat needs work, the Bullcap gets stuck, can’t turn around if the player stands too close, there is no hit animations, can’t tell if the enemies are dead.
• Players are walking right by the valves
• Needs more feedback in almost all aspects, but especially UI, combat, and main mission activities
• The unlimited refill nature of the candle “bonfires” feels unsatisfying currently, maybe pickups could help.
• “The flash feels not very powerful at the moment, the light already pushes some enemies away and the tradeoff for using that resource feels underpowered. Maybe it needs to do some damage?”

We will address these points to improve the overall gameplay experience.

Plan for next week:

• Team goes through the feedback list and addresses these points based on priority, do build cleaning and bug fixing