Yesterday I performed the first multiplayer playtest of my game, with two people who hadn’t tried it at all before. I first explained the basic controls and gave both players time to play a couple of levels in single player so they could develop a feel for the game. Both players enjoyed the single player experience, and they both had very different strategies for beating several of the levels.
I then had the two players try multiplayer. I briefly explained the extra controls for multiplayer, then let them play the first level. Both players felt that multiplayer was less enjoyable than single player, and gave me a lot of feedback about why this was so:
* Multiplayer controls and energy system are too complex. Players became confused about how to freeze and melt blocks, and mostly just used the fireball attack
*Players felt that directly attacking each other was enjoyable, but being attacked was really annoying. Attacks were primarily used right when someone was about to win, to keep them from doing so.
* Players commented that more subtle attacks, such as changing the friction of the opponent’s pieces or increasing gravity on their side of the board would be useful and more fun.
* Players felt that the multiplayer boards were a bit too cramped.
The playtesters also found several bugs, so my first task will be to fix those. I feel that I need a fairly major revision of the multiplayer mode. The playtesters said that they liked the puzzle solving and construction aspects of the single player mode, but that the multiplayer largely became about attacking. One suggestion the playtesters mentioned would be to drop vs mode entirely, and concentrate on making some really interesting co-op puzzles, which would require two players working together to solve.