First of all, we can’t go ahead without thanking all the voters for including us in IndieDB’s TOP 100 Indie of the year award! We couldn’t be more thankful! Reaching this milestone is of incredible importance to us but we need your help again in the same endeavor. Now IndieDB has opened another vote to see in which position of the TOP 100 list WOODPUNK “wood” #pun finish in! So yet again we need your help! To vote, you just need to click the link and vote for WOODPUNK, no need for registering, it will take only a couple of seconds!
Now into one of this week’s article, this past weekend (7.12.2018) we attended the “Fun & Serious” event in Bilbao, Spain. It’s one of Spain’s big gaming event where a several indie dev-teams united to show their progress.
The best reason to attend these events is to meet players who have played WOODPUNK or have heard of the game! A few attendees who came to our booth mentioned that they have played WOODPUNK before, or they have seen a YouTuber play and wanted to try the game out. Our aim is that the community participates in WOODPUNK’s development to make it the best game possible, so increasing the player-base in these events is really important to better WOODPUNK! We were also interviewed by journalists which gives us the opportunity to increase the awareness behind the game.
Thanks to attending these events we can get first hand feedback from the attendees, with a lot more insight thanks to the open and real time discussion we can have. Also if you attend these events you can receive some important feedback from other game devs related to game design. When we attended other similar events we can back to the office with several tips and tricks to better WOODPUNK.
The games that attract the biggest attention are normally multiplayer games, where several friends can play simultaneously, so we’re in luck! Our player base mainly plays in single mode so we generally don’t receive a lot of feedback as how the multiplayer is being played.
We noticed a couple of things related to multiplayer. Theo, player 2, does not have a health bar and therefore he’s invulnerable. Instead he has a stamina bar which he can fill if both players recollect scrap/coins. To not make player 2 too overpowered we implemented that if player 1 receives damage, the robot’s stamina bar would drop. We hope that by doing this we revive the feeling of playing couch co-op with younger siblings in a game mode where they can help you out but do not danger the main player’s run.
The vast majority of the attendees were first time players. If they played with a friend, most of the time the second player would not be able to cast an ability as player one would be constantly receiving damage due to the lack of skill/experience. This worsens player 2’s experience, therefore we are implementing a new drop for the second player to pick up. When picked up the stamina bar will instantly increase enough for the second player to be able to throw a couple of cheap abilities.
Another issue we could find with the small number of veteran players is that picking up health packs once the player is full health is quite useless. We received feedback that we could change this to make it more rewarding to stay full health! The idea we received through our Discord was to give players a point multiplayer if they pick-up a health pack while full health so we’re studying to implement this!
Other issues found during the event is the usual bugs you find after hours of looking at the screen, like localization issues, small interface bugs…the deal.
Well this is it for now, thanks again for voting for us! We’re exhilarated of entering the top 100 IndieDB list! Remember you can still vote to see in which position we finish exactly! See you soon with another update!
