Maker Log #3 - Exciting feedback from The Maker Way early playtests

This wouldn’t be a proper post about playtesting without a glorious video from a playtesting session. In The Maker Way universe, we call this Jump-Walking. It’s a new technique for effectively traversing the map. Only a few play testers managed to experience this unique game mechanic. Unfortunately, this functionality was deprecated in the last version due to a bug fix - haha!

The feedback from playtesting so far has been amazing. It is hard to describe the joy of seeing players interact with, and enjoy, a piece of work you are pouring your heart into. It’s truly addictive.

While I’m collecting data points on player interactions, machine builds, exceptions etc., and learning a lot from the aggregate data, nothing beats the live playtesting sessions and videos that players send my way with live commentary. I already uploaded 5 new builds with many bug fixes and improvements. The last build (b15) was almost two weeks in the making and fixed many lingering issues.

My plan is to upload to Steam a new build at least once a week going forward. Many of the updates will revolve around bug fixing, and also a gradual increase in the amount of content in the scene (both parts and points of interest). Even with the initial content, several of the playtesters chose to play multiple sessions, clocking almost 10 hours in the game, which is just mind-blowing.

The most exciting moment in every playtest session is seeing the players figuring out how to build a machine, and then seeing their joy in operating it. It’s a magical moment in the game, and throughout the playtesting period, one of my goals is to make this initial experience the most enjoyable that I can make.

Back to coding now!