Feedback for first games (version alpha 1.4.3)
My family just finished play testing the new battle mode this past weekend (4/14 and 4/15) and I thought I'd pass on our thoughts to the team.
Our players were my 9 year old son, wife, and me. We played on an iPad air mini.
The two big issues we noted were as follows:
1. During gameplay, we couldn't tell which person's turn it was based on the guardian highlighting. The slight coloration on the iPad version of the game made it difficult to tell.
2. It wasn't super clear how we were actually battling one another. Aside from the migration modifier taking a beast from one player and giving it to the other, we couldn't tell exactly how to damage other players. It felt a lot like we were playing three parallel games of the base game that had some cross over effects. This made it hard to really formulate a good strategy for placing beasts and the use of the other modifiers. It felt more like we were simply increasing the strength of our own beasts and trying out outlast the other players.
We also thought it would be great if we could store player profiles so that we could see win-loss records, stats, and possibly even customize the guardian avatars. This avatar customization might alleviate the challenges determining who's turn it was and add to the replayability of the game.
Overall, we really enjoyed the first look at the new battle mode! We can't wait to get our hands on the new beasts and the action cards in the upcoming game!
-
Official comment
Hi Bristlebeak,
Thanks so much for the feedback! We've been working to make the changes in turns more obvious, so hopefully that will emerge in later updates :-)
In terms of battling each other, we were hoping elements (and the weather mechanic attached to them) could play a part in strategy - but this is definitely food for thought! I'll pass on the rest of your points to the dev team too.
Thanks again for the feedback - if there's anything else you come across as you go, please do go ahead and post it!
- Ana (someone who is realising their name is slightly less fabulous than everybody else on the forum now!)
Comment actions -
My 8 yo son and I just attempted to play this on my iPhone x. Visually, the game is fine but on the first screen where you pick your element, I can only see the first line of descriptive words beneath each element.
As for the battling itself, there really isn't any "battling" to speak of. Using this title is actually misleading because it implies some sort of action taking place directly between two or more teams; this set up is just a contest to see who can accumulate the most points (ie essentially, no changes have been made to the premise of the game). This is disappointing because neither my son nor I found anything to get excited about over this. There wasn't a way to see whose turn it was which made things even more confusing and less fun. Basically, weather interactions and building beasts as normal but calling it "battle mode" just isn't enough to make this entertaining.
-
Hi Lauren,
Thanks firstly for the feedback on the text display - I've passed this on to our development team to look into!
Thanks also for your feedback on the game-play. Our intention was for 2-3 players to be battling in the sense of battling to make their region (and beasts) the strongest of them all, so you aren't working together to accumulate points like the cooperative game, but against each other, stealing beasts with migrates, using elements to damage or heal beasts (combining this with the weather mechanic in the sky that can heighten these effects) etc. This may not have been as clearly signalled as we'd hoped in the document we put together!
The idea is that the music changes, and the guardians on the side of the screens become active to signal a player's turn, but I will pass this on, along with the rest of your general design feedback to our team.This is definitely useful for us to keep in mind, so thank you for taking the time to let us know :-)
Best,
Ana
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
3 comments