Typical hero role in games

I've converted a "The Game Crafter" game into a Kickstarter of $42.5k. Moderate amount of success, considering that my game is crazy fun for kids, parents and adult gamers. It's hard to say that all in one sentence, but it is very true.

And now to help you... The thing about "dying" isn't so dramatic... The question that I ask YOU is: "Is this game of yours, FUN???"

Your game needs to be FUN to play. I know that "FUN" is very subjective ... but usually (if you're honest with yourself) you'll know if it's a 5/10 or 8/10.

If it's a 5/10, I would shelve the game and focus on something NEW. However if you feel that the game is an 8/10... Well then other people may feel the same way... because it IS FUN! And sometimes it's sheer "luck" that a design comes together... Other times it's with all sorts of "iterations" and fixing and resolving issues with the game.

Game Design can at times be very taxing too.

Just try to be honest with yourself. Figure out what you want to do with this game too. If you feel that the game does NOT have mass gamer appeal... How do you think the Kickstarter will be? Will it be successful if only a LIMITED amount of people are interested?? Probably NO. UNLESS you can make it relatively INEXPENSIVE and maybe even use a POD service like "The Game Crafter"... That could be one possibility.

And so I've addressed Question #1 and #3.

What about #2... Not sure how to "change" your game. OR even IF to change it. My question to you would be again: Do you want it to be MORE appealing to make for a larger audience of players? Would you be happy with getting the game out as it is to the people who will truly appreciate it and its differences??

Again I would consider a POD. Limited audience = limited production.

But then your game is OUT-THERE and people who really like it can BUY it.

Depends 100% on what YOU want to do with YOUR game AS-IT-IS now. Gave you some food for thought.

Cheers!

The easiest thing to do is ASK your playtesters what they thought of the earlier version. What made it exciting? What made it that they wanted to play?? Was it the PvE aspect that attracted them initially to the game???

Asking questions from playtesters is the best solution in answering those questions... To finally KNOW what playtesters LIKED about the previous version.

Well here's a bit of a nugget of knowledge that other BGDF designers brought to my attention: you know when a game is complete (done) when there are no more elements that you can REMOVE.

That's right: you need to streamline your design. And make it as lean as possible while still holding on to the elements that are critical to the design. So maybe while you ADDED some elements, they may not be as interesting as YOU thought... Because maybe the design was already in a good state... So by adding elements, you sort of unbalanced the whole design... And changing it to make it more competitive maybe was also the not the best direction especially something that was cooperative.

So your design was already COOL and streamlined... And then you added a bunch of ADDITIONAL elements and suddenly the experiences wasn't as good.

Again talk to your playtesters... Ask them questions! That's the best way of knowing what did and doesn't work.

Maybe it was purely an impression you got... How can you be certain that the playtesters liked the new version LESS than the old one? Did anyone mention anything? Comments?? Feedback???

Anyways get to the bottom of this: ask them questions.

Cheers!

It is important to note: it has been said that players can only remember between five and nine things at any given time. Asking people to memorize more than that or to remember even the simplest things in addition to gameplay can create a major problem.

And example from my own game, which is also a dungeon crawler, was from my character card. There were large symbols that represent it basic stats of each character such as strength, dexterity, wisdom, health, move, and range. These were not titled, but were instead given very obvious symbols. Even though all of the symbols were used very regularly in many aspects of the game, i found players would routinely ask what they were, or confuse one for another.

I added abbreviated explanations for each stat, and reduced the need for a NEW PLAYER to memorize 6 things. Nobody complained, but I discovered this through observation. New players would spend at least five minutes examining their character card at the beginning of the game.

Also, I am a big proponent of removing elements. Using my character card once again, I ended up removing one core ability from each character. I was unhappy with this at first, because I enjoy rich complex experiences and choices in RPG‘s. But the thing that I did not understand at the time was that deceptive simplicity is more important than richness of choices. If the game is very hard to play the first time, but easy to play after two or three runs, you might think it’s fine, but players will never make it to two or three runs if the first run is not fun understand at the time was that deceptive simplicity is more important than richness of choices. If the game is very hard to play the first time, but easy to play after two or three runs, you might think it’s fine, but players will never make it to two or three runs if the first run is not fun!

So how about making a CONSCIOUS decision to make this either a 1 vs. 1 game OR a 2 vs. 2 game. That would definitely "change" the perception quite a bit... Once you KNOW who is/are your opponent(s)... Well then using the right characters might be more self-evident.

By doing this you kinda say: "These players are trying to conquer the dungeon" AND "These players are trying to PROTECT the dungeon from being conquered".

When you make it an evident fact that players are NOT on the same side... I'm sure most players will become more immersed in their respective roles and your game will feel CLOSER to what you "sort of" had in mind.