Post-GDC Reflections

Hello folks!

I'm back from GDC last week and had an excellent time. It was truly a delight to see some old friends, meet some collaborators face to face, and meet new devs and folks working in the industry. I definitely started to get a bit tired by the end of the week, but overall I was so glad to go.

If you go over to my bsky you can see some individual highlights from different talks/events I went to, but for this devlog, I'll focus on how things went showing and discussing Bundle of Joy over the week and some key takeaways.

The MAIN takeaway is that I need to be showing the demo more. I need to get more folks hands-on experience with the demo and to give me in-person (if/when possible) feedback on what I'm working on. This is probably obvious, and playtesting is always essential for development, but I particularly felt this because I've been so nervous to show folks the redesign, and I got nothing but positive feedback, praise, and thoughtful feedback. The biggest "surprise" is that the moment of humor landed and the moment of contemplation made people pause. I've been worried that the goofiness wouldn't come across and that players would try to zip by the monologues and tutorial text snippets. But almost everyone smiled at the moment(s) when I was trying to be funny and took their time reading the text. 

I must admit that this might be the case with the semi-selective sample size of folks I showed the game to, but even when I demoed the game at the Godot Meetup at the Github offices to folks I'd just met, the reaction was better than I had expected. During that particular event, I got some great feedback about player input and maintaining a sense of flow within the game. There are moments where the input mapping switches between mouse clicks and keyboard input and I think I need to either: 1) make this more consistent/deliberate or 2) provide VERY clear instructions on how the game wants you to interact with it. So making sure that when the player presses the mouse button to advance leads into a section where they continue to use the mouse will make the flow of the game a lot steadier. I also haven't considered multiple inputs so allowing players the choice between clicks and keypresses is also something I want to integrate.

I still think there needs to be a BIIIT more tutorializing when the player starts the game. I noticed, for instance, that plenty of people didn't feel like they needed to perform button mashing when asked to "press ____ key." This might be a language thing or it might also be a GUI thing in some instances, but I think doing some more playtesting will help narrow that down.

One of the other takeaways has to do with the ending sequence looping back to the start and ensuring that the last scene gives the player clear feedback about how the game is both 1) interpreting the "parental performance" of the player based on their stress level and 2) responding to their "reflections" at the end of the day.

On top of these big things, I came up with a really good idea for how to make the game loop continue to be variable, fun, and challenging. The next development steps are adding more minigames to the "stack" of possible games you encounter, and then adding layers of difficulty to each minigame (some of which I've already designed but need to structurally incorporate). 

I can't wait to incorporate these notes and observations into the demo and game going forward. ALSO if you're interested in playtesting this game, PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM!

Thanks for reading, more soon!