Boston Indies Demo Night

Wow, so much feedback. The UI still sucks, but it's good enough that some people fought through it long enough to ask about gameplay. I got about 7 responses. Here's the highlights:

• This was good... for a first try/beginning project. Doubtful they know this is almost 18 months old.
• This one big mission is too big, hard to get difficulty right.
  • Moving isn't obvious, and some players would misclick where they want to move, or they didn't notice movement penalties on difficult terrain. Beginners may not have enough instruction.
  • But for the experts, there's a lot of dead time where you are just moving into position, or waiting for enemies to do nothing and wait their turn.
• "Click on the target" looks like a button, and the "OK" button should be close to the mouse.
• Players did discover clicking to skip animations.
• Locust attack range is not clear, and many players were surprised when it attacked from 3 spaces away.

Oh, and I learned Torrin is a common male Irish name, which doesn't fit with my main character. So I need to rename her. Sir Camil can use Torrin as his given name.

Overall it was humbling but I could sense improvement. It's also a reminder that stuff I put up with in the early 2000s wouldn't fly nowadays.

Automatically Select a Target

If there is only one target in range, it is automatically selected and we skip straight to the confirmation. It's one less click and one less chore players deal with. It also avoids showing the "Click on the target" label unless it's necessary.

Remove hover to show the range

I had hoped hovering over to show the range would help players preview and anticipate behavior. But it just confused users into trying to move without selecting a character. Also, it didn't show the Locust's range, so I'm back to the drawing board.

Remove Click to Move

Didn't help alleviate the movement issues and became more confusing. This was a suggestion I took from someone from the last demo night, so it's important to try suggestions and test again.

Added Proficiency Bonuses

Before demo night, I added proficiency bonuses when attacking armor. Sir Camil is a natural and excels at it. Everyone else is a novice. The Tier bonus is replaced with the Proficiency bonus.

What is next?

I still have a lot of UI tweaks to do, this was some of the quick stuff.

• Free range movement - Instead of spending actions to move, you don't spend actions until you attack. Action Points are reserved as you move, but you can peek, decide you want to be somewhere else, and retreat to regain AP. Keep doing it until you have the perfect position. This will be its own release, I can tell already.
• Move Actions to right above the GUI - Adding the GUI on the bottom of the screen was a good move, I could tell players gravitated towards there. One player mentioned how little detail was in the action descriptions. Why not move them to the bottom? Then I can print a longer description in the tile instead.
• Move OK & Cancel near the mouse when you select a tile. I was conflicted over whether to put it on the bottom in a fixed location, or keep it near the mouse to reduce movement. One tester felt very strong about this, calling the current location a mistake.
• Show enemy actions and movement - Why not show all of the enemies? Then players can hover over an action and see its range, or maybe I draw its most likely action.