So, it's been almost 2 weeks since the release of the first version of Brickbound (V0.4.3) but still some work must be done before the full release.

Today I'm going to reveal what I've learned from the first play tests:

1. IT'S NOT CLEAR HOW TO WIN!

Developing the game I made the assumption that the win condition of the game was easy to understand and... I was so wrong...

At the moment the win condition it's to hit the top of the screen with a ball many times, I tried to polish a little bit by making the ball play a different sound when it hits that spot BUT that wasn't enough.

Inside of the power up shop there's a power up that allows the player to see the enemy (level) HP to better understand how to win and how far they are from it.

I'm probably gonna remove that power up and make the HP stat spawn every time.

2. SLOOOOOOOOW

The gameplay it's too slow at the moment, to be honest I'm satisfied with that base speed but the first impression every player had was that it had to be a little bit faster.

I'm considering many different options on how to make that happen without changing the base stats of the paddle/ball. I'll discuss the reason of not wanting to change the base stats in the future.

3. MONEY = POWER

The main way to progress to the game it's by spending coins to buy power ups. The problem is that just to afford the most cheap ones you need to have 5 coins, at the moment achieving 5 coins in a single run it's not that easy so I may increase the amount of coins dropped while playing.

I'm also considering removing the penalty of losing all the coins as a new run starts.

Speaking of that...

4. WHERE ARE MY COINS?

Starting a new run will make you lose coins, this is done so a player must be skilled (or very lucky) to progress to the game. At the moment I don't know if I'll leave this mechanic inside the game, regardless of this I'll make it more clear by adding a confirm right before starting a new run.

This are just some of the issues I've found while doing play testing, in the new version at least 2 of this issues will be fixed (hopefully), feel free to leave a comment to let me know what to improve.