This past week we have gotten DEO’s first Beta test results back from our beta testers, and amongst all of the different issues/suggestions one has stood out to me amongst the others; “Is DEO too difficult?”

I found myself asking this question too. I mean, where is the balance between when a game is ‘too hard’ or ‘too easy’? It’s a hard question to answer because I think it depends on the people who are playing it. Some people enjoy games that are extremely difficult; other people want games that are very easy. Different gamers have different ways of gaming (easier/harder) that satisfy them. This can be based on how much free time the person has, or what style of game they like (ex: someone who enjoys RPG’s shouldn’t be expecting to finish the game extremely quickly). On a personal note, I don’t believe that DEO is too difficult; the concept is simple to understand. Just jump! However, some of the levels might be a bit challenging. Of course this goes into the process of making a game work well.

So today we asked our intern to draw out some more sketches of some simpler level ideas to start off DEO so that the players can get a hang of controlling Deo and advance to more challenging levels. He had a good time brainstorming some new patterns and levels that can make learning the game a lot simpler. If we decide to go that way the challenge will then be to keep the first batch of levels simple and easy, but at the same time interesting and catchy. We’ll see how it works!

This isn’t to say that any levels are going to change, but this is just some [behind the scenes] insight on some ideas that we are having.