J6

Most of the responses I got from the people who play tested my game were similar to what I expected, but there were still a few differences between their experiences and my expectations. One of my biggest worries about the game and something that a lot of the people who play tested my game said was that the weapons that I currently have in the game are not balanced at all. Some of the weapons are really powerful without having any significant drawbacks. One of the play testers suggested that I could fix this by treating the items as probabilities (each weapon has a damage value and a hit percentage) and then balance them by making the probabilities equal. One of the differences that I noticed, though, was that the play testers did not approach the strategy in the same way that I thought they would. When I was designing the game, I expected players to take a certain approach to buying items and general combat strategy, but the play testers' strategy was quite different.

As it stands, the game is not very functional, complete, or balanced, but this is about what I expected so I'm not too worried. I knew that the game would not be balanced because I couldn't think of a good way to chooses parameters for weapons and characters, and I just chose numbers semi-randomly. It's hard to make the game complete at this point, I think, because I'm planning a story and several levels for the player to go through, but only made a test scenario with a few example items for the demo. Lastly, the game was a little less functional than I thought because the calculations that are required during combat took longer than I anticipated, but this should be cleared up once I begin to program it.

This prototype made me think more about how much work actually goes into making a new game. I had always guessed that new video games always started as programs, but it seems that having a physical model for the very first prototype is a good thing. It helps you to think more about the game itself and less about how you implement it.

As a prototype, I was quite pleased with how the play testing went, and I don't think the game needs too many large overhauls. I have played with numbers on the weapons and characters to make them more balanced (for example, I've lowered the damage on the battleax, which was overpowered before, from 13 to 11). I've also added an element to the characters to give them proficiency with weapons in order to align people's strategies more closely to my idea of how the game should be played. I did this because some people tried to play a mage (who should stay in the back and attack from a safe position) as a fighter (who runs in and fights up close with the enemies). As I continue to work on the game, I'll work on adding more characters, weapons, and levels as well.