Well I'll tell you what. If you don't want to go public beta (and that's completely understandable) but you still want some outside input, hit me up privately and I'd still be willing to take it for a spin. At the end of the day you need to do what you are comfortable with. I do like the idea of the hot air balloon, though, so I hope you at least stick with that!
1 Like
Maybe you can submit your current version to Twin Cities Playtest? It's a 2 and a half hour session where people come in and try out games. It's recorded so you can see how they discover your game and what was good or bad for them.
Here is September session:
2 Likes
Just been doing some more testing locally. Since some players complained about having to keep looking at the altimometer rather than the balloon, I tried a new version where the airstream arrows are above and below the balloon.
Testers liked this better, but some still wanted to see the airstreams in the context of the height available to the player. So now we have an altimometer that appears when you are not moving, and close to the balloon.
If this tests well this week, I'll make a better job of the non-existent in/out animation 
4 Likes
Holy moly! How do you have such a good eye for graphical design? I envy you 
1 Like
This is so cooooooooooooool!!!
I absolutely love the graphics!!!
1 Like
I just realized (thanks to the last memberās posting) that itās been almost a year since the last update. Is this project still in production? It always looked like a lot of fun, and the visuals are some of the best Iāve seen for a WIP. Hopefully everything is going OK on your end, Paul, project or not.
1 Like
Thank you for the support! Crikey, a year, donāt know where that has gone 
Having thought about the gameplay for a while, it might have been better to give the player more agency, imagine a steampunky balloon with side thrusters that could be directed horizontally with the d-pad and keeping the crank for up and down.
Because I was unsure of what would work, I spent a few months on a more traditional scrolling shooter, Space Mash, and Panic were great, putting it on the Catalog and giving it top billing a few weeks ago.
I messed up, though, maybe it was the wrong genre for Playdate, wrong price or simply the game was perceived as being low quality by potential players. Space Mash has sold around 70 copies to date, and Iām grateful to everyone who bought it, but this is not going to make a dent in the costs of production.
So Iām just a little bit cautious about investing a lot more time in a title for Playdate. Itās a great platform, so developer-friendly, and itās been very easy to deal with Panic and get stuff on Catalog. Iād just need to be sure that I could make something that would appeal to more players.
Perhaps some sort of crowd funding would work? I donāt know if anyone has successfully run a Kickstarter campaign for their Playdate game. It would be as much about generating interest in an upcoming title as generating funding for development.
2 Likes