Alpha testing in the Inner Circle

A delicious piece of information for you all: 

We had our first playtest with an Inner Circle member very recently, and it went swimmingly.

We had a hectic weekend preceding getting it all ship-shape, a marathon of bug fixing and polish. We implemented a UI redesign for these tests and it was great to see it in use. While we may have been terrified that everything was about to break, we needn’t have feared. The whole process went smoothly - and we learned a whole bunch of places where we can improve.

We did our first test with the lucid and charming Mr Very Mean from our Inner Circle, he had the following to say:

Was very excited, but a bit nervous since I was warned that it was in an alpha state. 

All that being said, I was quite surprised how well the game worked; no breaking, so that was a huge plus. 

I was the narrator and came up with a story on the fly about a wrongly-accused man needing to escape prison before his imminent execution. Invented some characters like a traitorous wife, a jealous rival, a true love he’d meet, etc. and then planned the encounters for the first chapter. Accidentally clicked save instead of what I was supposed to and that started the game early, so only had the first chapter to play through. I started the flow of the story and it was exciting to see where Simon was taking things. We were on Skype, so I was aware of the typing and what was going on overall, but the story beats that were bounced back to me were all surprises. 

The point system is interesting and plays differently than I expected. Being able to contest/change the story contributions of another player was a nice surprise and should allow for stories to take interesting directions. The only issue I ran into is keeping in line with the way the story was planned versus how it played out. Even with such a short play through, there was a character and event I wanted to edit/add but those were stuck, so I couldn’t. I think with a longer game, the need for this would grow as you never know how a story can change or grow over the course of playing it out. I know you want to be able to deliver a consistent story and keep true to the events and stuff drawn from the beginning, but so rigid without allowing any flexibility I think will also be an issue. Trying to find a balance is important, but I think it should be addressed somehow. But that is honestly the only major issue I can see popping up. 

All in all, I was really impressed with the stage the game is at now, especially for such an early build. Cannot wait to play again! 

Naturally we’re happy as Larry. Mr V.M. chose a story of betrayal and dramatic escapes - what would you have written about?