Henry the Cloud: Devlog V Road to Release II: Live testing sessions

Game

Henry the Cloud

8 years ago

Henry the Cloud: Devlog V Road to Release II: Live testing sessions

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to our fifth and final devlog before releasing the game. It’s been a while since our last devlog, but we have not been sitting still. Read on to find out what we have been up to and what has been the hold up - and mostly, to get hyped - because we are about to release Henry the Cloud on Android and iOS!

First and foremost, we have been extensively testing. We already touched upon this in the last devlog, and we have been continuing to do so. We have had various live sessions, in which we have gathered groups of people of various ages, genders and origins to come play our game. These sessions have resulted in an amazing amount of feedback, nearly all of it positive, and we would like to once again thank our testers! Without you, we truly could not have done it.

Furthermore, these testing sessions have given us extremely valuable insights into how people play the game. It was interesting to see how some people had a completely different playstyle from what we thought people would have, which allowed us to tailor the gameplay to work well for an even broader audience.

This immediately turns us to what we did wrong - or, rather, what we could have done better! Everybody adopts a unique playstyle and one of our little mishaps was assuming that our gameplay mechanic was solid right from the start. We assumed from various paper prototypes and other proof-of-concepts that the ‘swipe and release mechanic’ that we use for Henry the Cloud, was so easy to understand that users would not need even a short tutorial. However, first time players had a hard time figuring out exactly what to do. The obvious solution: implementing a very brief tutorial.

Although the brief tutorial cleared up a lot for first time players, our gameplay mechanic still had another flaw. After hours - no, days, or even weeks - of mind-cracking mathematics, one of the most solid pieces of control input was written. But unfortunately, beautiful code and nice algorithms are not always enough. The controls were still not responsive enough and we decided to help our players. We did this by adding a small funnel to exert a tiny amount of magnetism to Henry and the line he tracks. We reduced the size of hitboxes. We made various speed tweaks and relocated objects and enemies on the map. All this, purely because we found the entry barrier was too high.

In the end, we learned a lot from the data we gathered. However, being able to see players of various ages, genders and origins play your game physically, in person, for the first time… Now, that gave us the most solid and resourceful insights.

After all of this, we are proud to announce that we feel we have tweaked the core gameplay mechanics to be extremely accessible while still appealing to more serious players.

We are pleased to announce that we are currently at a point where, perfectionistic as we are, we feel confident to release. Therefore, please get hyped, because Henry the Cloud is due to release on September 15th!

See you in the clouds!

On a closing note: Highscores are fun, but the importance of testing was shown once again during one of these sessions. One of our players found a glitch for an infinite highscore…. Oops! Thanks Thom - we are in your debt. :-)