What We Learned from Our First Playtest

Hello, players!

It's been a little while since we made the first demo for Journey to the Void available. The first thing we want to say is thank you! Thank you to all of you who took the time to try out our game and for all the feedback you've sent our way. We're a small team, so getting this kind of player feedback has been invaluable to us.

One of the big things we learned is how we get players into their first game. We wanted to make this experience as frictionless and easy as possible without overloading the player with a bunch of new systems as soon as they start.

Game design is full of unexpected challenges, and one of the trickiest we faced was explaining how card direction affects which tiles they hit on the grid. Communicating this sounds simple, right? Well, after playtest feedback and multiple iterations (and a few late-night debates), we finally landed on a solution that feels intuitive and satisfying and we are excited to implement in our next build.

When adding text to the game, we want to strike a balance between giving players the info they need whilst also not overwhelming them with a textbook's worth of mechanics. One surprising discovery in our playtest? Our discard system went unnoticed. When discarding, players can drag unwanted cards to the bottom left corner. We initially didn’t shout out this feature and relied on a small icon as a hint for this action, it turns out many testers didn't notice it at all! Lesson learned: sometimes, a bigger nudge goes a long way.

These are just two of a bunch of smaller changes and little quality-of-life features we have been adding to Journey to the Void as development continues. The whole demo experience has been invaluable to us, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled here or on our Discord, as we will be running more playtests!

Until next time,

RuneHeads