Did some pre-alpha testing with a few people who haven't seen the game yet. My testers were aged 9, 11, and 22, and I learned a ton of things about my game.
One of the basic premises of my game is that many things are cold, and getting too cold leads to death.
Several of my terrain graphics were ambigious as to whether they'd be surfaces that freeze you. Especially cave ice, which has the the further complication that it's usually being viewed in dim light or near-complete-darkness. So lots of the graphics got updated after the first round of testing.
Another issue that came up was the action button not doing what the player expected it to do, even after learning the basic interactions currently implemented. The major place players got frustrated was when trying to pick up a Flurry that has just been punch'd out of a snow pile. The reason for the confusion is that the snow piles would start accumulating again immediately after the flurry was released, which means that there were two objects in front of the player when the action button was pressed. Sometimes, the game would select the snow pile instead of the flurry, and the player wouldn't be able to pick up the flurry, and often take damage from it while they were mashing buttons. I fixed that by making sure that the snow piles don't turn their physics or start accumulating until there are no flurries or the player around it (within two tiles). It seems to work perfectly (thus far).
Some of the other trouble spots were level design issues... places where the leading lines of the terrain don't clearly indicate where the player is supposed to go. So lots of updates were made there.
I also reduced a lot of the terrain damage and added in some forgiveness around the edges of those tiles so that slight overlaps aren't as harsh as they were before. This, in turn, means that I have re-design several areas that were supposed to be dangerous and aren't anymore, but that's alright. I think it'll lead to better level design in the end.
I also learned that children are more likely to explore first and pick up rules as they go, and that 20-something players are eager to establish all the rules and limit their exploration until they know what's expected. Even if that's not a universal truth, I'm going to try and think about both of these approaches (regardless of age) and try to provide enough points of interest and learning to accommodate them.
New terrain graphics:
Shallow Water, now with blending so the boy looks extra-short while wading through.
Ocean, now with deeper, more subtle details.
Cave Ice: now with chunkier-looking danger.
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