(Click here to jump straight to the takeaways)
Our first Rift of the NecroDancer demo was playable at PAX this year!
As a first time Game Director, it’s been a wild ride getting Rift going, but I’m very proud of the team’s progress, TicToc Games hard work, and getting it to the state it’s currently in!
Our goals from the start of the project was to modernize Crypt of the NecroDancer and try to bring in even more players to the franchise from the rhythm game genre.
And it seems to be working! Players had a blast learning our take on the genre! We had many people come back to try and beat their high scores!
Takeaways
Since this was also the first time we showed the game to the public we learned a lot. Aside from a host of bugs, I’ll try to paraphrase the things that we learned:
“Beginner” Difficulty Should’ve Been Called “Normal”
Currently, we have 3 difficulties: Beginner, Normal, and Hard. Each of the 3 demo tracks have 1 of each difficulty.
Problem: Most people avoided the “Beginner” difficulty because the word doesn’t align with player’s feeling that they are seasoned gamers and they can handle more. This occurs even when the players soon realize that they don’t understand our game’s particular mechanics.
Solution: This is a longer discussion that we’ll need to have moving forward. But the main takeaway is that having properly named difficulties helps set the player’s expectations properly.
Missing Down Key during the Tutorial
Problem: During the tutorial for how to control the Rhythm Rift gameplay, players often miss using the down key during the tutorial for hitting the entire row of monsters. It seems that lots of players do not read.
Solution: This particular tutorial step needs to be reinforced as the player is practicing this step. Perhaps text popup as the monsters reach the action row.
Practice Mode
Problem: A lot of players requested a practice mode that they can use to attempt particularly troublesome sections of a track.
Solution: We’ve already discussed a practice mode and have plans to implement one. Getting this feedback and hearing it from players reinforces our plans. It’s clearly a genre staple and not having a practice mode could hurt our rating at launch.
Conclusion
The PAX demo was a huge success, and despite some bugs and missing features, players were excited for the game! We met lots of people and got good feedback.