I've been watching a few streamers try out my game Shrinkage and thought I'd collect a few things I'd learned.

If you haven't played it yet, Shrinkage is based on Tetris but when clearing a row the game area shrinks so you continuously lose rows. This is pretty much how I wrote the short interactive tutorial in the game, but that brings me to my first point...

Not everyone knows Tetris

One of the streamers I watched had to go and look up how to play tetris, because it was not explained in the game. When developing Shrinkage, I didn't feel the need to explain the core concepts of Tetris because "everyone knows Tetris, right?" Wrong.

The lesson: Don't assume that everyone who plays video games knows "the classic". It may seem obvious to you how Tetris works, but there are people out there who have never played it in any of its versions.

Those who do know Tetris, skipped half of the tutorial

In a typical game of Tetris, you can score some points by clearing a single row, or you can score more points by building combos. The latter is also a testament to your skill in the game, as complex combos are way cooler and can be used to show off.

The tutorial is structured in four steps: - Introduction: asks to clear a single row - Clear 1 row: explains the concept of the shrinking playfield and asks to clear a combo - Clear 2 rows: explains the concept of combos and asks to score a super combo - Clear 3+ rows: explains the super combos

Unfortunately, a lot of players familiar with standard Tetris went straight for the combos. So they missed the core idea of the game, what sets Shrinkage apart from other versions of Tetris. They were confused when the tutorial for combos said that they don't cost lines ("Cost lines? What are you talking about?"). And after a few combos, when they did end up clearing a single row, they were surprised to see the playfield changing. My tutorial had not helped them at all.

The lesson: Don't assume people will follow (or even read) the instructions if they think they know the game. If you really need them to do something, hold their hand and limit their other actions until they do. Otherwise, design for the possibility that they skip steps or go an entirely different direction.

The bugs I worried about weren't discovered, only ones I didn't know about

When I submitted the game for the compo sunday evening (approximately 6 minutes before the submission deadline), there were a few glaring bugs in the game that I just didn't have time to fix. I was very worried that people would find them, and then brag about scoring millions of points by exploiting these bugs. This did not happen.

There were three reports of bugs where movement input would get stuck or break down entirely. I tested everything and I made sure that the input worked smoothly, but unfortunately things will always break no matter how careful you are developing them. But other than those bugs, I didn't really receive any issues, comments or bug reports. Balance & missing features, yes, but the bugs I was afraid of haven't been mentioned once and I haven't seen them in action.

The lesson: People will break your game in ways you didn't see coming. A few known bugs in edge cases will likely not even be discovered, especially not in the short term.

I hope this post was interesting to you, I learned a lot from participating in my first LD!

I you haven't played Shrinkage yet, go check it out at https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/shrinkage and leave some feedback!