Greetings again Hellhounds and Heretics! Last month, LoG conducted our “Technical Playtesting Round 1” (TP1). Our goal was to put the game in front of a small amount of eyeballs to gather external opinions on Solium Infernum (SI). The idea was to gather initial feedback from the perspective of Original SI players, as well as completely new players. We had learned from experience of our previous game ([url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/290340]Armello[/url]) that playtesting is one of the most important parts of game development. So much value came from our OG Kickstarter backers giving us feedback early in development. With that in mind, we knew it was going to be important for SI. But a game like SI is really like nothing else, so there were so many twists and turns. It wouldn’t be Solium Infernum if there weren’t, right? This was also the [i]first time[/i] that Solium Infernum had been played by anybody outside our dev community. So … a little bit of stress. But, overall, it went … relatively smoothly. And we learned quite a lot! Not only about how to improve SI, but also about Playtesting in general. As an indie studio, we’re always trying to punch above our weight, and gathering insights from playtesting rounds is another means for us to do so. We thought that we would take June’s Developer’s Log to explore those learnings and take you along for the infernal ride. So, lo and behold, What We Learned From Playtesting (So Far) … [h1]Learning #1: Live Optimistic, Pessimistically[/h1] [h3]The Worst Could Happen … But People Will (Usually) Understand![/h3] In discussions with Trent, fellow Co-Founder, and Studio Director, we both agreed that the most frightening thing about conducting Playtesting is to learn that the core of the game is not received well by the player base. If the community does not resonate with the bones of what the team has been building for years, it is a [i]significant problem[/i] for an indie publisher. Luckily, with both Solium Infernum’s Playtest and [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/1893820]Jumplight Odyssey[/url]’s Demo (which you can still [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/1893820]play[/url], if you want a galactic change of pace!), our core communities were highly receptive of the fundamentals in both games. In the post-playtesting survey, over 90% of Players said that they found the game enjoyable – which is incredible to hear! And dare I say: Phew. Of course, that’s not to say there is not an immense amount of work to be done. A game like Solium Infernum is a mammoth undertaking, even if you were to try and simplify its various mechanics and interactions. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/5158e22a807af4e15552a3360540d8d54a7627d1.gif[/img] [h2]Places of Power: Far and Few Between[/h2] As to be expected with a game as early in development as SI, there were some fundamental bugs and limitations involved that had a significant impact on gameplay. Things that took us by surprise and surfaced late in Playtesting, like the Places of Power, were - of course - frustrating for everyone but helped us immeasurably (and is why we do the testing in the first place!). [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/c90b345c0b62d019ddfbec1785d2ba95e2d9776b.png[/img] In a typical session as intended by Game Design, there are no less than four Places of Power, all the way up to seven or eight on a map. However, as an unintended and near-invisible bug in the Playtest, it was unusual for more than two or three Places of Power to be present on the board, many of them too ambitious to conquer at low levels. This seemingly small bug really impacted player behaviour! It also gave us important insights early in development on how Players interact with Places of Power and the board itself. [h2]Getting Animal Control on the Phone[/h2] Additionally, as part of League of Geek’s reinvention of original Solium Infernum, our team introduced a neutral foe called “Abyss Striders”. These Hellish beasts roam the board, wreaking chaos and sewing uncertainty wherever they go. We didn’t expect them to breed like rabbits and completely overrun some boards, though. And – even worse – we didn’t expect the Edict that conjures a Strider Infestation to outright crash games. Our dev team quickly mustered, called up Abyssal Animal Control, and dealt with the Striders in a patch … but their existence on the map fundamentally changed the way that players interact on the playing board. Where players were once sure of victory or defeat, a Strider within three cantons adds an element of uncertainty – this was intended. What was not intended was the conga line of Striders – all supporting one another – demolishing Level 1 armies across the board. This is why we find Solium Infernum so cool. The smallest thing can have the biggest impact on the outcome of the game, and these machination kinks need to be ironed out to function well. [h2]It’s Lonely at the Top..[/h2] One of the largest, most important fundamentals of the Original Solium Infernum was the importance of Diplomacy between the Archfiends. After all, this is the politics of Hell, and the path to the throne involves crushing others in your path using it. When TP1 began, there were still some important elements of Diplomacy in development, and it simply wasn’t ready to be unleashed upon the world. From the start, we knew that there was going to be a lot of feedback on the lack of Diplomatic options that were available during testing. Not only was diplomacy the beating heart of the original, but also the beating heart of the re-imagination. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/e3603ef6ec704839bc206e2fff60a938cec326ae.png[/img] We received some feedback that described how “lonely” Solium Infernum felt at times, and how many Player decisions were stunted because they couldn’t communicate, forge alliances and advocate their cause with others in the game. This feedback really cemented what the community finds most important in Diplomacy and has provided some much-needed understanding of specific pain points that our Game Design team can craft solutions around. In our review sessions, the Game Design team explained that they had all the mechanics for “Capital D Diplomacy” – demands, insults, etc – but it was the “little d diplomacy” that our TP1 players found lacking – elements that support tabletalk and roleplay. This brings us around to a much-discussed problem in the development of Solium Infernum – facilitating these important functions. We’ve been trying to marry up the ambitiousness of being an indie studio with the realities of hosting tabletalk functionality. Game development is full of answering big problems like this… We’re working hard to deliver a solution that we all love. Ultimately, even if we did anticipate the “little d” diplomacy as feedback, it’s really great that it was reiterated in such clear ways for the future of Solium Infernum. [h2]Charisma and Manuscripts[/h2] Balancing a game as complex as Solium Infernum is HARD. We are the first to admit that. A community member in the Playtest said once that Solium Infernum is as complex as a house of cards, and that pulling at one card has a collapsible effect that is often hard to gauge until folks are playing. Our Principal Game Designer, Anthony, calls it an “infernal engine”. “You can pull the lever and be [i]pretty sure[/i] of what's going to happen, but never 100% certain”. (It bears repeating, but its why playtesting is so critical for us.) Game Design knew even before TP1 launched that Manuscripts needed to be revised. There is a unique method of completing Manuscripts in the Original Solium Infernum that we intended to rethink. Our plan, at least currently, is to implement the Manuscript system as fragments able to be collected, but not as specific pieces to a “puzzle” as in OSI. The largest issue that we experienced as part of TP1 was that the pool of Manuscripts was too small – the Praetor Move Manuals are not yet added – and this made it a hell of a lot easier to find similar fragments. (Praetors and their Move Manuals are something that we’ll explore later on 😈 ) This seemingly small change threw both Manuscripts and Charisma wholly out of balance. Quickly, our playtesting community illuminated the Charisma Tree as “OP” because of the Manuscripts. It became almost trivial to play non-Charisma-focused characters, and thus Andromalius and Belial were highly coveted Archfiends because of their initial Charisma buff. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/b890387123fa4cde9ed0f1d7dfa7ea2d60c18639.gif[/img] Naturally, we’re trialling a lot of adjustments to Charisma, the Tribute economy and Manuscript mechanics for future iterations on Solium Infernum! [h3]To Conclude on our First Learning[/h3] We received some incredible, detailed feedback on very important systems. With tens of thousands of words and hundreds of Discord messages, it was a lot to wade through, but we did it! And with these in hand, we can identify which systems are going to be gameplay-affecting issues. This means we’re armed for future development and iteration. [h1]Learning #2: Contextualise Feedback -- Always![/h1] [h3]Receiving Feedback is Great, but Organizing it in a Digestible Way is Better![/h3] We knew our Original Solium Infernum fans would understand what we're trying to accomplish with our reimagining. There is a certain sticky tenacity to SI that keeps you awake at night, even while your computer is off; scheming and plotting like you’re inhabiting an episode of [i]The Queen’s Gambit[/i]. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/0b7b31c4d47c11e20a7d3a6f9d45434f943ef864.gif[/img] Upon entering TP1, we fully expected thorough, well-rounded, and OSI-comparable feedback from that group of fans. We also went to great lengths to recruit a second group of folks that had little to no Solium Infernum experience. This pillar of Playtesting is as fundamental as our OSI fans – Solium Infernum needs to resonate with new players as well as older players to be successful. [h2]Know Your Players[/h2] We found a great majority of those who stuck around to the very end of the month-long Playtesting period to naturally be those who'd previous experience playing the original. This is, of course, something that we expected – SI in TP1 was very hard to comprehend for a complete beginner. Armed with only some tooltips, Discord Forums, and advice from our community, it takes an enviable amount of eagerness to hang around learning a complex game. This bit of feedback is – by far – the strongest that we received in our Playtest so far. With this in mind, Game Design has now focused on Player Onboarding: tutorials, tooltips, and helpful indicators toward victory conditions. Our goal is to get folks as quickly as possible to the “sticky” parts of Solium Infernum – the parts that have made the original such a cult classic. Some here at LoG have described OSI as a ‘Diamond in the Dark’ - we see our job as taking that diamond, shining it up, and letting the sparkle be seen by way more people than just those who did the digging all those years ago. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/7cb4970106828fb66c81f9823c576a58ce5b9a84.gif[/img] In our review meeting, our Principal Game Designer, Anthony, quoted Derek Yu in their [url=https://www.derekyu.com/makegames/feedback.html]diagnosing feedback[/url]: "[i]Another way to think about interpreting a player’s feedback is as a doctor diagnosing a patient. A player brings his or her symptoms to the doctor ("My stomach hurts!") and may even offer a solution ("I think it could be the flu!"). In that scenario, it’d be a bad idea for the doctor to either dismiss the validity of the patient’s symptoms or to blindly accept that they have what they say they have. Like patients, players are often most in tune with how they feel about the problem rather than what is causing it.[/i]" Comprehending the feelings and symptoms of the problem is the most important thing to the Game Design team – they can then craft and ideate on the best solutions for the overall player base. We used many Miro Boards to capture feedback: a separate spreadsheet and Board for the Survey-specific feedback, but we also created the following Board for interesting commentary from our Discord Server. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/cc8261446ccc5608a5cae30fe64999cfbcce0eab.png[/img] By separating our information out in these ways, it became easier to comprehend and digest as a team. [h3]To Conclude on Our Second Learning[/h3] All feedback is valuable, so long as you can understand where this feedback is most applicable, and recognize any biases. We have learned that our OSI fans are incredible balance-testers, able to play at a macro strategic level while being comfortable in most of the minutiae rulesets. The biggest piece of feedback, though, was the need for adequate onboarding for the newer players. The only blind spot our OSI Playtesters have is they know the game like the back of their hand, so intuitively understand gameplay that newer players find clunky, obtuse or otherwise impossible. Those paying attention might have deduced that the TP1 feedback requires a mammoth-level of work and revisions, meaning that it might be a while before you see another Playtesting round. Good things take time, and Solium Infernum is no different. [h1]Learning #3: Unsurprisingly, Game Balancing is HARD…[/h1] [h3]Especially in a highly complex, multifaceted game like Solium Infernum..[/h3] [h2]Striking the Archfiend Balance[/h2] Often feedback coincides with something that we felt strong about internally - that each Archfiend should feel different from another. Not only on a visual, aesthetic level, but fundamentally as part of their playstyle – their [i]je ne sais quoi[/i] -- needs to be special and individualistic. We dub this internally as their “edge”. If you think about it, these Archfiends have clawed their way up to a seat of power – accumulating enough notoriety to rival for the Throne of Hell. This immediately infers that the Archfiend needs two things: a clear sense of who they are, and why no one should get on their bad side. During TP1, the Archfiends had some unique mechanics, but we realise that these were not signposted very well, nor were their effects felt to an extent worthy of a real Archfiend of Hell. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/fcfed0d4ee6010855c5a14519c8af881fc1c0e12.gif[/img] Our Game Designers really wanted to foster moments where each Archfiend can “break the game” – we use this term internally to explore the sensation where a player can reach into the game and [i]massively[/i] alter it. If that unique ability is used – and we’re doing our jobs right – nobody should miss that moment. That player should feel like an absolute boss, and everyone else should be ducking for cover. The passive abilities seen in TP1 were placeholder, while we worked on each Archfiend’s [i][b]Dark Art[/b][/i]. Rather than being a passive ability, each Dark Art is an active ability unique to each Archfiend that emphasises their theme and allows them to really meddle with the game in interesting ways. In a game as complex as Solium Infernum, it takes time to balance these independent abilities and understand their effect on the game ecosystem. This will keep being iterated on right up to launch (and maybe after too!) We’ll discuss more about Dark Arts in future developer logs! [h2]The Greatest Challenges: As Identified By the Community[/h2] Other than Rules and Communication, Bugs and Balancing, UI and UX – all things that we are actively working on – there were two major challenges identified by the Community. It is undeniably complex to navigate through Solium Infernum. It is also hard to understand the repercussions of the decisions that you make in early game, and often the best decisions to make were to accumulate Tribute and increase Rank rather than engage with your fellow Archfiends. It is also a big challenge to present this information in a succinct tutorial, that gives enough information to get started, but not so much that it overwhelms new players. “Early Game” – probably best defined as the first 10 turns of a game of Solium Infernum – was a large pain point for some playtesters. Because the “best options” in the mind of most players were to request Tribute, move toward Places of Power and increase Rank, it meant that the Early Game in TP1 felt “slow”. [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/ff06f164790a2c72539819f99acac38a53f23cb0.gif[/img] After our Friends & Family (F&F) round of playtesting, we implemented a Turn Timer that ensured games of Solium Infernum ticked over once every 24 hours. This seemed like a great decision – we found most games in F&F were stalled when one person did not take a turn. This “stalled” feeling continued over -- in spite of the implemented Turn Timer – to TP1, where matches begun and at least one player did not regularly submit their turn. This meant that some matches were slowed to an infernal snail’s pace. In future iterations, there will be adjusted timers and methods to remove inactive players – we’re just ironing out how that looks now! [h2]Interesting Tidbit: How Players Describe the Game[/h2] [h3]When asked how they would describe Solium Infernum, our testers said:[/h3] “[i]Complex turn-based strategy, with interesting diplomacy system and wonderful style.[/i]” “[i]The experience of playing feels the same as watching the first couple of seasons of Game of Thrones[/i]” “[i]Would you like to play a game of asynchronous bureaucracy with a topping of skulduggery?[/i]” [h2]Some Interesting Statistics[/h2] [list][*] Over 90% of those that provided feedback on the playtest enjoyed Solium Infernum! [*] 50% of the folks that had played Original SI knew how to win, whereas 25% of the new users felt they knew how to win [*] Out of the Archfiends, Murmur’s aesthetic is regularly praised, Belial’s cunning is strong and Astaroth has earned their title as a “loveable himbo”.[/list] [h2]& Some Really Kind Comments From the Discord[/h2] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/8d5d70178e57bb9b8c25bdced90918676e6bbd5a.png[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/6a7820ca6fcab70ea757785a0550624d650a09c7.png[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/636d592375c410d2ad09356c91bdf829f2efa8c0.png[/img] [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//42983950/c9e42bc376b17ae014335718e6f5326aaa23abed.png[/img] [h3]Conclusion[/h3] Technical Preview 1 was an insane ride, but we’re ecstatic about having been able to present our first iteration of SI to testers! We hope that this Developer’s Log has given you an insight into some behind-the-scenes thinking of our team, and given you faith for the future development! A massive thank you to all the community members who volunteered, played and participated actively – we’re only an indie studio, so all of the love is very much appreciated! Thank you again, and until next time… See you in Hell, Ty. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [i]If you've made it this far, thanks for following along. I intend to share more posts like this, detailing the development process as it unfolds and exploring the unique challenges the privilege of re-imagining a cult classic like Solium Infernum for new (and old!) audiences holds.[/i] [i]For now, you can join the [url=https://bit.ly/LeagueOfGeeksDiscord][b]League of Geeks Discord community[/b][/url] for all the infernal news and discussion.[/i] [i]We're actively entering into our Playtesting era for Solium Infernum, so if you wanted to be part of that, we definitely encourage you to hop in the Discord. More information will come soon there![/i] [i]P.S. You can support us and our re-imagining of Vic's "diamond in the dark" by Wishlisting Solium Infernum on Steam, if you haven't already. Wishlisting tells the all-great Steam algorithm that people like what they’re seeing and gets us in front of more eyes.[/i] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1893810/Solium_Infernum/