This week was a self-set big date for me.  I asked to set my game up for a local expo that was going on and built a demo to let people try the game out.  I think I have to say the results were very mixed, but the good news is that I got a bunch of support from friends, and the exhibitors that liked the game seemed to REALLY like it.

Art

Ref's week has been busy developing the next level enemies and responding to 1-off things I needed for the demo.  The main changes we made this week is updating the first level enemies to be bigger and have more contrast with the rest of the tile map.  This piece was actually received rather well, and all of the complaints people had about it being hard to see the enemies vanished! I think overall this was a peek change for the demo, and I'm glad we did it.  

As for the level 3 enemies, we've finished the stills for all of them and are hard at work animating now.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Capsule Art

Another big piece of news is that I've officially welcomed a new capsule artist on board.  I'm happy to announce that I'm working with Daniel Lieske (https://www.artstation.com/daniellieske) to develop the capsule art for the game and he's been doing a great job of it.  Check out his color sketches of the new promo material!

I'm really happy with the changes to the action pose for the main character and the incorporation of the powerups into the actual artwork.  I can't wait to see where this goes as we flesh out the enemies and finalize the piece.  

Another big thing is that steam has been cracking down on the strictness of logo placement in capsule art.  It seems we can not longer have a logo in the top-left corner of the screen on account of the "DEMO" banner overlaying and obscuring the name.  This was something Daniel helped me work around as we concepted the logo and tried to figure out it's placement.  Overall great stuff!

Programming

This week has all been about code hardening and getting the game ready to demo for the expo.  This was a big challenge for me because I really wanted to make a new build that had the completed evolution system ready to showcase.  As a result, I spent the latter half of the week squashing bugs and tutorializing the new system to anticipate having players come to grips with it.  Fortunately, from the internal playtests (aka asking friends to play) The evolution system seemed like a very positive edition.  I KNEW that it would be a great edition, but as the expo showed, conveying how it works to the audience proved to be the real challenge.

Expo

Overall the Expo went really well.  I was given my own table to set up on and one of my friends was kind enough to come early with me to help get things ready for the crowds.  We were placed in a room that was a little bit outside the main hall (which I personally think led to less visibility but whatever) and waited for people to come by and try out Bloodmoon Survivors.

This was a great learning experience for me because it really let me just hover over the game and see people's reaction to it.   The results were positive overall.  Everyone who came by seemed to like the level of polish and detail the game had going for it, although I quickly realized that there were 2 types of players, the ones who have played Vampire Survivors and those that didn't.  The ones that have played it before, seemed to go for longer and really enjoy the mechanical additions.  The ones that were new to the genre bounced off HARD.

My main take away is that for gamers that do not play these types of games this one is VERY difficult.  People were getting absolutely wrecked which I found painful to watch.  No because I blamed them but because it made me realize I may have over tuned the difficulty of the game.  As a general note I will have to lower it, for new comers and instead hide the difficulty by the increasing Bravery system instead.  

Another big take away is that I have to rework tutorialization of the evolution system.  Again I found this strange because it seemed like I over explained compared to my competitors.  But even with explicit tutorial instructions no one seemed to understand how it worked.  This is something where I wondered if the problem was that people were picking up the game for 5 minutes and moving on, and if people playing on steam would be more inclined to investigate and enjoy the discovery.  This is something I'm still going back and forth on.  I think the only way to tell will be to have off-line play testers who try the game out alone and give feedback.

Next Week

Next week I need to get back on schedule with building out the remaining game levels.  As much as I want to keep polishing the demo, I think it's hitting the point of diminishing returns.  I'm starting to realize that this is about as good as blood moon will be, and I have to just build out the remainder of the game.  That's not to say I'm dissatisfied with where it is.  Not at all! I'm just starting to realize that it's strength are in long term play, and that means I have to focus on building more long term content that sustains attention over time.  And that, is something I am excited to work on again.  So till next week!