{"author_link":"\/users\/alchemic","author_name":"Alchemic","author_uid":"alchemic","comments":[],"epoch":1621479911,"event":"LD48","format":"md","ldjam_node_id":257238,"likes":3,"metadata":{"p_key":"158283","p_author":"Alchemic","p_authorkey":"1005151","p_urlkey":"378530","p_title":"Red Stranding Post-mortem","p_cat":"LDJam ","p_event":"LD48","p_time":"1621479911","p_likes":"3","p_comments":"0","p_status":"WAYBACK","us_key":"1005151","us_name":"Alchemic","us_username":"alchemic","event_start":"1619222400","event_key":"109","event_name":"Ludum Dare 48"},"node":{"_collation":{"body_sanitizer":"TextUtils::SanitizeHTML via existing importer","event":"LD48","removed_author":false},"_superparent":233335,"_trust":11,"author":5151,"body":"Well this LD was certainly a ride!\n\n## Intro\n\nOur game was a Strand-like, meaning that players can partially see each other's changes to the world. The core gameplay is simple open-world exploration, arranged in a highly linear fashion moving from north to south.\n\n![3f16d[1].png](\/\/\/raw\/f14\/1\/z\/42968.png)\n\n### Scoring\n\nCheck out our results here: https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/red-stranding\n\nWe didn't very high ratings, and we think we know the reasons.\n\n1. We simply didn't finish everything we wanted. The game is very incomplete, and it's obvious while playing.\n2. The artwork is kinda ugly. We didn't have a lot of time to polish the graphics or sprites or anything.\n3. The new player experience is very poor. This is elaborated in the Data Analysis section below.\n\n### Data Analysis\n\nSince our game connects players to each other via a database, we can see rough analytics about playtime and completion rate.\n\nNote: We gave players the option to play offline, and some did choose to do so, so these numbers do not include those players.\n\n- 64 total players\n- 24 made it past day 10\n- 6 players (other than us) made it to the goal, Grandma's House\n- 22 players never made it past day 3\n\nDay 10 is important to us, because that's when a player becomes maximally connected to the other players. It's a gradual process that starts with zero connectivity on day 1.\n\nSo, from these numbers, we can see that about 1\/3 of all players likely never encountered another player's effects! Given that this is the core premise of our game, this is quite bad.\n\nHowever, about 1\/3 of all players did make it past day 10.\n\nSpecial thanks to @ruruie, @cievers, @gcake, @wouter52, and @jitspoe for providing key feedback and testing the game to its full extent!\n\n### New Player Experience\n\nGiven the data above, and from watching people play our game, we can safely say that the new player experience was quite bad. We probably lost a lot of people early on, who never got to see the Strand-like features. Our ratings almost certainly suffered due to this.\n\nSo, what could we have done?\n\nA way to showcase the game's features during the first minute of gameplay would have been nice. We have considered a few options:\n\n- Have an area near the starting house that always shows changes from all players, kinda like a shared sandbox area. This would give players a chance to try out the online features without breaking the game's balance.\n- Introduce an item to the game, available from the start, that boosts the player's connectivity rate to the maximum for a day. This would ensure that everyone trying the game for only a minute or two would get to experience the full effects of the online system.\n- Do a better job of explaining things in-game. Players who didn't fully understand the online system seemed to become simply confused whenever another player's structure became visible to them.\n\n### Cut Features\n\nTime was not friendly to us this LD. We didn't meet a lot of our goals.\n\n- We were planning on having a much larger open world to explore. This was by far the most ambitious part of the project. This did not get finished at all. We completely ran out of time and had to implement the entire level in just a few hours.\n- We were planning on having more structures and movement abilities that would help traverse the landscape more easily.\n- Enemy AI was cut entirely, and the enemies just move straight towards you. This was primarily due to limitations in Godot's tilemap-based pathfinding support.\n\n### Future Plans!!\n\nYes, we're planning to continue working on this game.\n\nIn fact, we've already started working on our first post-jam version, which we plan on releasing in the near future.\n\nHere's a sneak peak of the updated visual style:\n\n![red_stranding_preview.png](\/\/\/raw\/f14\/1\/z\/42969.png)\n\nIf you are interested in playing this post-jam version, please follow the [itch.io page](https:\/\/alchemical.itch.io\/red-stranding), and join our new Discord server!\n\n### Discord Server\n\nIt's a bit empty right now, but we've made a community Discord server for the game. We intend to use this server as the primary source of feedback on the post-jam version of the game.\n\nJoin it here: https:\/\/discord.gg\/wVXhx7CCQr\n\nGrandma is waiting!\n\n![red_stranding_grandma.png](\/\/\/raw\/f14\/1\/z\/42970.png)","comments":0,"created":"2021-05-19T04:06:49Z","files":[],"files-timestamp":0,"id":257238,"love":3,"love-timestamp":"2021-10-05T18:46:54Z","meta":[],"modified":"2021-10-05T18:46:54Z","name":"Red Stranding Post-mortem","node-timestamp":"2021-05-20T03:05:11Z","parent":244975,"parents":[1,5,9,233335,244975],"path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/red-stranding\/red-stranding-post-mortem","published":"2021-05-20T03:05:11Z","scope":"public","slug":"red-stranding-post-mortem","subsubtype":"","subtype":"","type":"post","version":792313},"node_metadata":{"n_key":"257238","n_urlkey":"378530","n_parent":"244975","n_path":"\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/red-stranding\/red-stranding-post-mortem","n_slug":"red-stranding-post-mortem","n_type":"post","n_subtype":"","n_subsubtype":"","n_author":"5151","n_created":"1621397209","n_modified":"1633459614","n_version":"792313","n_status":"WAYBACK"},"source_url":"https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/red-stranding\/red-stranding-post-mortem","text":"Well this LD was certainly a ride!\n\n## Intro\n\nOur game was a Strand-like, meaning that players can partially see each other's changes to the world. The core gameplay is simple open-world exploration, arranged in a highly linear fashion moving from north to south.\n\n![3f16d[1].png](\/\/\/raw\/f14\/1\/z\/42968.png)\n\n### Scoring\n\nCheck out our results here: https:\/\/ldjam.com\/events\/ludum-dare\/48\/red-stranding\n\nWe didn't very high ratings, and we think we know the reasons.\n\n1. We simply didn't finish everything we wanted. The game is very incomplete, and it's obvious while playing.\n2. The artwork is kinda ugly. We didn't have a lot of time to polish the graphics or sprites or anything.\n3. The new player experience is very poor. This is elaborated in the Data Analysis section below.\n\n### Data Analysis\n\nSince our game connects players to each other via a database, we can see rough analytics about playtime and completion rate.\n\nNote: We gave players the option to play offline, and some did choose to do so, so these numbers do not include those players.\n\n- 64 total players\n- 24 made it past day 10\n- 6 players (other than us) made it to the goal, Grandma's House\n- 22 players never made it past day 3\n\nDay 10 is important to us, because that's when a player becomes maximally connected to the other players. It's a gradual process that starts with zero connectivity on day 1.\n\nSo, from these numbers, we can see that about 1\/3 of all players likely never encountered another player's effects! Given that this is the core premise of our game, this is quite bad.\n\nHowever, about 1\/3 of all players did make it past day 10.\n\nSpecial thanks to @ruruie, @cievers, @gcake, @wouter52, and @jitspoe for providing key feedback and testing the game to its full extent!\n\n### New Player Experience\n\nGiven the data above, and from watching people play our game, we can safely say that the new player experience was quite bad. We probably lost a lot of people early on, who never got to see the Strand-like features. Our ratings almost certainly suffered due to this.\n\nSo, what could we have done?\n\nA way to showcase the game's features during the first minute of gameplay would have been nice. We have considered a few options:\n\n- Have an area near the starting house that always shows changes from all players, kinda like a shared sandbox area. This would give players a chance to try out the online features without breaking the game's balance.\n- Introduce an item to the game, available from the start, that boosts the player's connectivity rate to the maximum for a day. This would ensure that everyone trying the game for only a minute or two would get to experience the full effects of the online system.\n- Do a better job of explaining things in-game. Players who didn't fully understand the online system seemed to become simply confused whenever another player's structure became visible to them.\n\n### Cut Features\n\nTime was not friendly to us this LD. We didn't meet a lot of our goals.\n\n- We were planning on having a much larger open world to explore. This was by far the most ambitious part of the project. This did not get finished at all. We completely ran out of time and had to implement the entire level in just a few hours.\n- We were planning on having more structures and movement abilities that would help traverse the landscape more easily.\n- Enemy AI was cut entirely, and the enemies just move straight towards you. This was primarily due to limitations in Godot's tilemap-based pathfinding support.\n\n### Future Plans!!\n\nYes, we're planning to continue working on this game.\n\nIn fact, we've already started working on our first post-jam version, which we plan on releasing in the near future.\n\nHere's a sneak peak of the updated visual style:\n\n![red_stranding_preview.png](\/\/\/raw\/f14\/1\/z\/42969.png)\n\nIf you are interested in playing this post-jam version, please follow the [itch.io page](https:\/\/alchemical.itch.io\/red-stranding), and join our new Discord server!\n\n### Discord Server\n\nIt's a bit empty right now, but we've made a community Discord server for the game. We intend to use this server as the primary source of feedback on the post-jam version of the game.\n\nJoin it here: https:\/\/discord.gg\/wVXhx7CCQr\n\nGrandma is waiting!\n\n![red_stranding_grandma.png](\/\/\/raw\/f14\/1\/z\/42970.png)","title":"Red Stranding Post-mortem","wayback_source":[]}