DevLog 6 - The Decision Is Made

Between unwrapping presents, spending a good time with family, and decorating the Christmas tree, work on Paul also continued … and I made a decision.

The week was mostly spent on bug fixes, along with some improvements to visual feedback. Shortly after Christmas, a friend came over, we grabbed a beer, and did a spontaneous little playtest. As expected, a few issues popped up, but so did some really cool ideas.

When you work on your own game all day, you tend (or at least I tend) to get lost in the details and lose sight of what really matters. I originally thought I’d keep tinkering away on my own for a while before putting something playable out into the world. But during that playtest, I realized just how valuable good feedback is at this stage of Paul, how it helps avoid going down the wrong paths, throw out bad ideas early, and let better ones emerge.

So here’s the decision

I’m now working towards a demo (yay!). The plan is around 7 stages, roughly one hour of playtime, with a few basic items ,mainly to see how the controls and the core game loop feel for people other than myself, and where there’s room for improvement. I’ve already written down a first list of demo content (my early New Year’s resolution, so to speak).

Next up: back to the computer and finally implementing all the must-have features for a first version of Paul that I can show to the world without feeling embarrassed. Speaking of showing things: since this week was mostly about bug fixes and paper notes, and not so much visual progress, this post comes with a picture of our Christmas tree instead. (After all, every devlog needs at least one picture!)