It’s time for another update!
It’s been awhile since we’ve taken an in depth look into our playtests, so we would like to share some of the new insights we’ve gathered through our recent playtests.
Ship Computer
Last update we revealed the new detective board style ship computer that was meant to help players figure out what they should do next if they’re stuck.
These past few weeks were the first playtests involving the new computer and we’re happy to say it’s been a success! Without changing the core experience for our fans, it provides new players with a better sense of what Outer Wilds is about and allows them to have a more visual guide into the Solar System investigations.
Moving from there, our main objective is to improve feedback given to the player to make the experience smoother. While we’re satisfied with how often players die at the moment, we want to improve player’s comprehension of how they died. This requires a holistic approach through better visual effects, audio, UI and design.
Design
Speaking of design, we’ve been focusing on two things: polishing the level design and providing more visual storytelling.
Level design has been an ongoing process to polish some of the areas that are causing too much frustration. But what we’re really excited about now is the addition of more visual guides, holograms, and Nomai Petroglyphs. We hope to use these to further ingrain our players into the lore and get them familiarized with visual cues that will further their journey.
Writing
Finally, we are doing a huge final push with the writing!
Earlier we had been working on finishing the narrative and saw a lot of dialogue and text being implemented at a fast rate. Thanks to that we’ve been able to get a good sense of what works and what doesn’t through the playtests. Check back in two weeks for a closer look into what we’ve been doing to streamline the writing changes and more!
And that’s the end of this update. We hope everyone was a great weekend!
Cheers,
Mobius