Lucas played FLOCK again today (11/15) for about an hour while talking out loud. The last time he played was on November 4, when we had our first digital version, so a lot has changed since then. This time, he got to play the game starting from the title screen.
After his first run, he said, “Everyone made it. This is cool.” He liked the font, the Paper Mario effect, and the feedback he got from the headwind. He also liked the idea of having a storm chase the flock because it made sense with the game. One thing I liked watching was when he realized he could drag the birds around and started making formations just for fun. He also liked having mystery events to break up the flights, which he felt were getting a little repetitive.
Something I noticed pretty early on was how many words we use without explaining them. When Lucas read the first hint, he said, “It says it costs stamina, but I don’t know what stamina is.” We also use the word energy in a later hint, which doesn’t help. He had similar questions about what it meant for a bird to be lonely, exhausted, or big. These are all things I know because I’ve been working on the game, but someone playing for the first time wouldn’t necessarily know what they mean.
Lucas brought up how in Slay the Spire, he could just hover over a word like Exposed and get an explanation. I think this would work well for FLOCK, especially since I don’t want to make players read a bunch of tutorial boxes.
The problem is that we already have things you can hover over, but Lucas didn’t know he could. This came up with the weather and bird stats. He couldn’t figure out what speed did or how much stamina each bird had. We need to do a better job of showing players what they can interact with.
There were a few moments when Lucas looked at the screen and said, “Oh wow, that’s a lot of UI.” He suggested making things slightly transparent if they aren’t relevant to the decision he’s currently making. I want to try this because there is a lot going on during flights. He also ran into a few more bugs that I need to fix.
Another issue was how slow the beginning felt. The birds start pretty far away from each other, and Lucas spent a lot of time just trying to bring them together. At one point, he said, “There’s just not much mobility at all is what I’m realizing.” I wanted the first few flights to be simple, but I think I may have made them a little too slow.
As he kept playing, he started noticing how similar some of the cards were. There is a card that prevents a bird from being pushed, which he called “super useless because I’ve never encountered anything that pushes my birds.” That’s fair. There isn’t much reason for him to pick that card if he hasn’t encountered a situation where it would be useful. He was also confused about the difference between damage and exhaustion.
Although he liked the idea of the storm chasing him, he couldn’t tell how close it was or why it kept disappearing. I think we need to show the storm’s progress more clearly instead of expecting players to keep track of it themselves.
There are quite a few changes I want to make after this playtest. I want to explain stamina earlier, make it easier to see how much stamina each bird has, and be more consistent with the words we use. I also want to add tooltips and experiment with fading out parts of the UI. There are some smaller things I need to fix, like the weather icon getting cut off and the fullscreen scaling.
Questions for Feedback:
- How can we show players that something can be hovered over without adding even more UI? Would a small icon work, or should we move more of the information that’s already on screen into tooltips?
- How slow should the beginning of a roguelike be? I want players to start with simple cards and get stronger over time, but I also don’t want the first few flights to feel boring.
- Lucas liked mystery events because they gave him something different to do between flights. Should we spend more time making these events interesting, or should we focus on making the flights themselves less repetitive?
