A few weeks ago we sent out about a dozen private beta keys to start gathering some feedback for the project. This seemed like a good time to get thoughts on the current direction and the best steps to move forward. I feel its also relevant to note that this is the first (?) private beta we've ran, so I feel we stumbled on a few steps, but all in all it worked. The beta included roughly 20% of the game, but had enough of the core mechanics to have a strong idea for how the remainder of the game worked. We've done a lot of review of the feedback and it's given us quite a bit to think about. In no particular order, here are some various observations from our notes: Originally we had a lot of manually piloting the airship around. While a neat novelty, it became kind of a chore, and left other players in co-op with not much to do. We're considering making the airship more of a 'safe house' that you can access whenever you need it in certain levels, and potentially be able to pilot it around in areas (where it would make sense).
Keeping the deck cluttered with stuff is cool right...? Every single beta tester we got feedback from struggled with the combat difficulty. We've concluded there are several reasons for this that were external to the actual AI: UI Feedback, level design, the player's animations, and the lack of a proper combat tutorial. That being said, I'm looking at making weaker variants of the current enemy types to create a better learning curve. Fortunately this private beta didn't have any of the bosses, which may have been way more problematic.
Simple ghost who lobs magic, or the harbinger of death? On the up side, a lot of players found they liked the grapple hook. Some so much so that they effectively stopped walking altogether. There are a handful of tools you can equip to your left arm, but at the minute none of them really quite measure up with the grapple hook. I predict this might lead to some problems down the road so I think its a good time to reevaluate the other tools.
Not shown: Swinging into this tree. There is a lot of thoughts on the UI - which I think at this point needs an overhaul as well as some notable changes. I don't think I am going to discuss that at the minute as that may need to be its own topic. Lastly, we've still been overhauling the art style. This is definitely incomplete but I think the vibe is probably going to stay the same:

Thanks for reading.