"You need to get new players in and interested but also teach them the particular wrinkles of playing this game."

Onboarding

One of the most important parts of any game is the very start, especially when it's not an established series.  You need to get new players in and interested but also teach them the particular wrinkles of playing this game.  This week we spent a lot of time looking at the onboarding for Before We Leave.

Part of that was adding things we'd though of that help players to know what's going on, things like Info Pins that stick out of buildings to (for example) show you where other buildings of the same type are when you're building something, and Ranges to show you stuff like how far the pollution from that Oil Powered Generator will reach.

Small village being built

After that, we were lucky enough to spend a day at Otago University, with some of the students that are doing the game-dev Summer School paper there testing the game without any help or comment from us.  It was really heartening to see that there weren't any major issues, but at the same time we came away with giant piles of our own observations and their comments which will all contribute to making the all-important first couple of hours of gameplay as smooth and inviting as it can be!

Small village, zoomed out