People Cu3ed
People Cu3ed: Final Testing, Release and Retiring the Demo
As you can imagine – now is a crazy busy time for us. We’ve spent the last few weeks acting on user feedback from the Demo, adding a few extra planned features ourselves, and are now busy trying to break our own game is as many ways as possible – to make sure that our players can’t on release! Our main issue is that unlike the demo, the finished product has 40 levels of game – some of them taking quite a while to play through – and some being a challenge difficulty wise even for the small team that’s been involved from the start.
However this process is progressing nicely, and we expect in a few days to get version 1.0 up to Steam and released ready for press, reviewers, streamers and other media to receive copies prior to release. If you fit this bill, haven’t already been in touch with us and are interested in this – please let us know, and we’ll make sure a key finds its way to you.
So what have been doing the last few weeks?
One of the most common areas for improvement that were reported to us from the demo was the audio quality from one or two characters in particular. It won’t come as any surprise to learn that there was a direct correlation between how early in the game’s development cycle each of the characters vocal work was done, and how low-a-quality said work was… It was fair feedback, and as a result we’ve re-recorded entirely all the games voicework for our main antagonist ‘The Gamesmaster’ and for both of the parent ‘Cu3es’ found in the game. We’ve also removed some of the effects that caused a lack of clarity in the voice over work, as coupled to our extremely British accents – they were reportedly making it a little tough for some of our friends across the pond to understand.
Speaking of audio – some of the most positive pieces of feedback was around the in-game music (and we love it too!). We’ve actually expanding and mixed up some of the ‘tunes’ you’ll encounter across the 40 levels, introducing a new ‘rock and roll’ themed set of levels (you may have seen some of in some of our preview footage over the last few weeks). Experiencing this in VR with all the things that occur in game happening around you is hard to describe – but you’ll get the chance to see yourself soon enough!
Another area we needed to improve on was the interaction with the characters. This is always a tough thing to get right – and we knew it would be from our earlier testing. Some players really have no interest in the characters or the story, and some players just can’t get into a game unless they understand the ‘reasons’ for playing. We tried to accommodate this in the demo by granting two different ‘paths’ – one with story, and one without, but this still didn’t quite get the balance right, as we found people wanted more flexibility to pick and choose which interactions with the characters they had. We also found that too much character interaction was ‘up front’, and not enough happened later in the demo. This was partly due to us having not recorded said interaction yet for the demo – but also because we front loaded a little too much at the start as well.
We’ve fixed both of these things now, by giving the ability to skip as much or as little of the interactions (except for critical elements of instruction in the tutorial), and we’ve also moved a good chunk of character introduction away from the start and into the later game – and given the players the ability to decide easily if they want to skip this altogether. We’ve also added all the comic interaction and voice work with the characters in level – who will now periodically offer ‘help’ on your journey up the ‘crystalline tower’.
Another major task for us has been balancing the difficulty, along with the learning curve for the types of mechanics our players will encounter in the game. Like many games, the difficulty level is drastically different in the final levels than the first, and the techniques you use to move around and solve puzzles will change as you progress. Making sure this was fair, ‘felt’ about right, and that there was enough gentle nudging to learn these skills has been a big job – but we feel we’ve got the balance right now. We’ve tried to make sure certain levels act as ‘gates’ for the later ones, to ensure that if our players haven’t got good enough at a given set of skills to solve one level – they aren’t flung into a much deeper puzzle that requires the previous level of understanding before they are ready. This has been tough – players ability to find new ways to solve problems that we hadn’t thought of is impressive – and we’ll never truly get rid of all exploits (where would the fun be for the speedrunners if we did?), but the balance feels right now – and we’re looking forward to seeing people get slowly more and more skilled as they progress through People Cu3ed.
In addition to all the above there are a huge load of smaller improvements around animation, optimisation, puzzle design, graphical and lighting changes, bug fixes and control scheme options (including the ability to turn snap turning on and off as it bothered some of our Rift users in the demo), that we would be writing about all day if we listed all of them… So we won’t – we’ll leave it by saying, that compared to the demo – the finished product is a much more polished and ‘whole’ feeling game. This does leave us with a
We’ve decided to pull the demo from the store as we get closer to release. There are arguments both ways, but ultimately the demo is no longer representative of the finished product – and we don’t want people to try before they buy and get a bad impression of the game. It’s served its purpose, and in a way acted as our ‘pre-release Beta’, but now it is probably time to put it away. A fair question we’d expect you to ask is why don’t we update it with the improvements to the main game and release a ‘2.0’ demo? It’s something we thought long and hard about – but openly and honestly speaking it’s a question of time.
Switching our build from ‘demo mode’ to ‘full game mode’ wasn’t designed in from the start (we didn’t actually plan to do a demo to begin with!), and as such a lot of little programming changes needed to be made every time we wanted to build a new version of it. This, in addition to the building and testing new versions of the demo itself, took time – and that is valuable time we’d rather spend right now on adding extra polish to the finished product. If the trade-off is a shiny up to date demo – or more fun and features in the finished game for our paying customers – we have to serve those customers first, so our focus has to be on that.
We don’t have a fixed date on when the free demo will be turned off, but it will be at some point between now and the full release of People Cu3ed on the 2nd November. Those who have already downloaded a free copy of the demo will be able to continue to use it and can play whenever they like – however once the full game is released, we’d encourage that if you want a version of that game that is quantitatively better than the demo you’ve already tried – you download the full version of People Cu3ed and have some fun that way.
So that’s all for now – we are looking forward to the 2nd of November and we hope you are as well! If you have any questions, comments or just want to get in touch you can do via any of our plethora of social media (just search for Whitway Studios), or via email (info@whitwaystudios.com).
Happy Gaming!
Building People Cu3ed With Community Feedback
The game itself has been built from day one with the help of a great team of people willing to test the game as it’s developed from a rough and ready prototype, to where it is today – an almost complete (but unpolished!) title. Having the demo out has helped this process even further.
The demo for the game has been played by a series of streamers, reviewers and normal members of the public and the feedback we’ve got from them all has been incredible. A lot of kind souls have played the demo and taken the time to give direct feedback to us about what works, what doesn’t, and what could be better.
Taking everything into account so far, in the last week there have been 4 updates made to the People Cu3ed demo (and countless updates to the unpublished full build). All of these so far have been uploaded to Steam live – so are ready to try out right now!
So what have we learnt – and what have we changed?
Well firstly we’ve learnt people are willing to be patient with a small development team. There were a couple of bugs shipped with the free demo to start with, nothing game breaking, but certainly things we should have spotted but didn’t. As soon as they were found – they were swiftly squashed in whatever the next update – but still, it’s frustrating when they pop up, we understand that as we are gamers as well. Regardless – we apologise for them – and thank people for pointing out anything that was amiss!
We’ve also learnt a little more about how people want to perceive the User Interface (UI). We’ve purposefully kept the UI ‘low impact’ throughout (after all – it’s not like we have a bullet count or anything to keep track of in People Cu3ed!), however some of the font combinations weren’t working for some people so we’ve sharpened those up and also addressed some issues with the in-game menu where some users reported the ‘tracked floating’ system we were using was a cause of a sort of motion sickness. All these things were addressed in the latest update today.
We’ve learnt that there are plenty of people out there that are a lot better at the game – and finding new ways to move using our unique mechanics – than we expected. Because of this – a couple of levels especially in the demo was coming across as ‘too easy’. Honestly speaking, as we addressed in an article on Indie DB (here: https://www.indiedb.com/games/people-cu3ed/news/people-cu3ed-demo-shrinking-40-levels-into-5) it’s been tough to squeeze and balance the difficulty curve into just 5 levels – but we’re pleased to note now that we’ve sharpened things up a little on the early levels and made things a little tougher towards the back end of the demo now as well – and had a ton of learning to help us balance the main game too.
We’ve introduced a completely new mechanic to help control your character cubes. Now by pushing gently forward or back on either the thumb stick or touchpad (depending on the platform you play on) whilst you have hold of your cubes, you can ease them in towards you or push them out – giving more options for movement, and better fine control when a switch or opening is just out of reach. We’re particularly keen to hear from anyone who has played the demo before and after this was introduced to see what they think – so if this is you – please get in touch!
We’ve also continued to work on the performance of the game, reducing the workload on both the GPU and CPU, whilst improving the lighting effects to help with some of the darker levels (that are great fun – but don’t feature in the demo. Sorry!) Bottom line, this game is destined for a lot of the stand-alone VR hardware that is out/coming out soon, and we want those players to have as smooth an experience as possible as well.
One area we wrestled with was the how best to manage the story featured in the demo, and also the tutorial. As much as we love the characters in the game – we’ll be the first to admit, they do like to talk about themselves… A lot… We initially thought by giving players the ability to have a cut down version of the tutorial, we’d satisfy the type of player that wanted the ‘dive right in’ experience, but actually we found players were conflicted – wanting both the comedy of the characters, but to get to the action faster. For now – we’ve added flexibility by including a ‘press to skip’ function for most of the dialogue (except the critical ‘teaching you to play’ stuff). However for future – we’ve listened to what our users are saying about the how they want the gameplay faster as well as the humour of the story – and we have plans for how to handle this in the full game. Whilst we aren’t going to patch the demo with these (we don’t want to spoil any more of the jokes), trust us – in the full game – we’ll get that balance right.
We’ve also heard you on the voicework. Speaking (no pun intended) openly – the story was one of the things that was written up front – right back at the start of the project, and the game made around it. This meant that the voicework was all done very early in the production cycle, and some of it isn’t of the best quality. For our American fans – sorry – we can’t change the British accents, but as far as the clarity goes, yeah – everyone is struggling with one character in particular, so this voice is going to be reworked – as will anything else that doesn’t meet the standard needed for a full ‘paid for’ game.
Lastly we wanted to mention some special support for the company and the game. Playing the game and giving feedback is one thing – but it’s all together another thing to take what you see and put your own spin on it. Upcoming animator and artist @FaultyMuppet on Twitter kindly produced the below image for us yesterday, and we wanted to share it with the world. Please give them a follow for more gaming/VR themed art and animations.
That’s all for now – I’m sure we’ll have more to tell you in a couple of weeks – so make sure you have fun – and as always happy gaming!
Free Demo Released!
What do you get in a free demo these days?
- 5 of the 40 levels in the finished game
- the full tutorial (or shortened version - up to you!)
- The introduction to the story in People Cu3ed
- The chance to interact with us lovely people and let us know what you think
That last one is important. This game has been built from the ground up based on feedback from our testers and general testing with 'random people'. We want to continue that as we progress towards out November 2nd full release.
Please, please, please get in touch with us and let us know what you think. We want your feedback, and we want to talk, so either through the plethora of social media we are on (just search for Whitway Studios) or if you are feeling traditional - via email (info@whitwaystudios.com) - feel free to get in touch and let us know about your experiences with the demo.
Cheers!
More Updates...! And a 'Lets Play' Series
We've added a new feature to our Social Strategic View. Those on the outside can now just click on the mouse anyway to choose between seeing through the VR players eyes, or as a member of the audience through our special Social Strategic View. This was due to be a feature in the full release, but we decided to include in the demo as we had a little time to squeeze it in!
This now means the social strategic view is a feature not just for those with one monitor - your friends and family can enjoy it (if they choose to) or flick to the view of inside the headset at will.
This update is also designed to make it easier for those using the Oculus Rift system that doesn't seem to like multiple monitors to get the full People Cu3ed experience as well. It should also make the game more streamer/YouTuber friendly (if you fancy yourself as a bit of a creator) as it will give max flexibility to capture whichever output you want from however many monitors as you want.
We hope you enjoy!
We've also got a let's play series out now on YouTube. One of the voices of popular in-game 'comedians' - The Twins - came and filmed himself testing a few levels (some of which you won't find in the demo). Hilarity ensued... Check them out here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1nmpaVW_b0xMNEKypcfjKlOdmd4JDS3n
Happy Gaming!
Demo Update + Oculus Performance
A quick note on Oculus Rift performance. Whilst a lot of general improvements have been included in the updated demo that will make the game run more smoothly across a lot of low end systems, the major focus was to improve Oculus Rift performance.
Having investigated the issue, performance only suffers when multiple monitors are used in addition to the main one, and the headset itself. It appears that with the conversion OpenVR is doing to move the SteamVR game across to the Rift, the HMD attempts to sync it's rendering with the other monitors and this causes artifacts to be displayed that aren't present with either the Vive or Windows MR system (with these systems we've been able to render 3 monitors including a 32 inch 4k screen as well!)
Therefore we are strongly recommending that during your VR playtime, if you run an Oculus Rift, you disconnect your extra monitors - and only use the traditional one external screen. We've set this to display our 'Social Strategic View', for your audience to enjoy!
If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch with us directly :) we are friendly!
Have fun!
People Cu3ed Free Demo - Release: 7th September
We want to introduce as many people as possible to the crazy universe we've created, and we figured the best way to do that would be to offer you a free demo - and also because we're just plain nice people!
Happy also to confirm we are still on track for full release at the start of November. Add People Cu3ed to your wishlist, or hit the 'follow' button to make sure you are kept up to date with more news on the game.
Thanks!
Whitway Studios