I hit revision 100 in my code repository this morning. 100 check-ins so far on the project: not too shabby. Although…that number seems a little low. Maybe I’m not checking in frequently enough.

A friend of mine was in town last night and I went out for a couple of beers with him and a few of his colleagues. I let him play the game with the new double-tap to play mechanic. (Now that I have the game on my iPod Touch, it’s so much easier to get people to play it!) He seemed to really like it. The double-tap completely changes the way a new player plays the game. I watched him actually experimenting with different moves to see what would and wouldn’t work. I think it helped him to learn the possible moves better too.

I also played a few games last night on the subway and the double-tap is starting to feel natural. I find myself double-tapping quickly without paying attention to the first tap, and it feels natural. I think I’ll still put an option to disable the double-tap in the options menu, though, for advanced players.

My friend had a friend’s girlfriend play the game too, last night. She had a completely different experience. She looked at it, said “what’s going on?” So I explained what she was supposed to do. She made two moves, said “ok, I’m done” and went back to talking to her boyfriend. I guess you can’t please everybody.

That was actually a good experience for me. Mostly because it didn’t bother me. At this point I’m convinced that I’ve got a good game, so hearing someone say that they’re not interested in it actually didn’t bother me.

Owen

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 9:17 am and is filed under Design, Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.