In previous Postmortem I discussed what worked well with the game. Now it's time for some lessons ;).

Intro & Manual.

I wanted the game to be minimalist and immersive - launch the game, press fire and you're right inside the game world. Full screen game view, no HUD, no scores. You discover objectives and mechanics through gameplay itself. I assumed that core mechanics will be familiar and easy to grasp by retro enthusiasts (especially 8-bit Atari ones) since they originate from Sokoban.

I was wrong. On both accounts.

It appeared that some players did miss an introduction and felt lost not knowing who they are, what's the goal, etc. It also appeared that not everyone understands the core mechanics from the get go (not everyone downloads the game from itch.io or reads the instructions on the page). 

The conclusion - we will most likely add some sort of introduction to the game to clarify the game goal and core mechanics. But I want to do it in a way that is integrated into the game world.

First 20 minutes.

There's a game design heuristic concerning the first 20 minutes of gameplay - don't bore the player, avoid difficulty spikes and you have a much better chance of keeping the player engaged for the rest of the game. 

Making a niche game for a specific audience I did not think we needed to convince players as much and as a result of this I did not calibrate that first section of the game too well. The difficulty level rises too fast. I should have probably made 10-12 levels for the Prologue instead o 8 and spread first 4-5 levels into roughly twice as many. I assumed that if the game is short - players will be more willing to fight through it knowing that it's just a few levels to beat.

I learnt the hard way when I saw a few very short (2-6 minutes) playthroughs on YT. Some players struggled or even  got stuck within the first 3 maps. Needless to say - this doesn't look good... Especially the first level should not have any pain points or ambiguous situations and I left at least one - the laser barrier at the very beginning. Some players did not know how to open/disable it and were getting blocked even before entering the main gameplay area. Bad, bad, bad!

The conclusion - make sure that the first 10-20 minutes are butter smooth! Below is a rough comparison of the difficulty flow of the actual game (upper graph) and what it should probably be (lower one). You can see how the 20 minutes mark is probably around map 4 or 5 while it should be more around map 8 and difficulty should raise gradually in the beginning, possibly even having a "breathing" map somewhere that is simpler than the one preceeding it.

Introducing mechanics.

When introducing a new mechanic you need to add exactly one new element at a time.  There should really be a single and obvious action for the player to take to progress further.

An example is an introduction of the destroying blaster in map 5. This is the section where player has to discover that it's possible to redirect laser beams by passing them through the turn connection blocks. 

Let's break the layout down.

1. You have turn the blaster on manually first so it's an extra step.
2.  Turn connection blocks can be freely moved so it's possible to rearrange them even before enabling the blaster and therefore miss the new mechanic discovery.
3. You have to rearrange one turn block to progress further so there's already a puzzle in there, not just mechanics discovery.
4. There's an extra turn block here that is not needed for this section but for the next one - adds complexity to the layout.

Now I think I should have made the first encounter with laser beam redirecting mechanics much simpler. Everything is laid out already and there's no way to change it (notice the lack of on/off switch and the extra crates blocking all the connection pieces). Player simply walks into the area and the mechanic reveals itself. 

Then we have the more complex setup with laser on/off switch, puzzle challenge and any extra elements.

Forced replay value.

Seven out of eight maps in the game have secret areas. These add a significant amount of gameplay as usually it is harder to beat the map with the secret than without. To add some more replay value to the game there was no obvious hint about these secrets until the end of the game. If you beat the game but don't find all the secrets you are told to try again on the end screen. Explorer type players still have a chance of finding all the secrets on the first playthrough but the point here is that players don't have a chance to make up their own mind on how to play the game. They are pretty much forced to completing the game twice as probably only a minority of players will get all the secrets the first time around.

That's probably it from me. If you played the game and have some other feedback regarding what we can improve - feel free to drop a note in comments!