This week I worked on a bunch of journal entries and continued the story where I left off last time. After these next three journal entries, I'm finally going to be able to start talking about the abyss since our author will actually be in it.  I'm very excited about how things are progressing because if people actually enjoy the journals and lore bits I've placed in the game it's going to hit home really well and be a great game. I'm just worried about the journals not quite hitting the mark I wanted. That's my main thought about this week. I like the journals a lot but will the players?

My Studio manager brought up a fantastic point today about making sure that I'm getting live feedback from playtesters to find out what's working and what isn't. Furthermore, I should be present during the playtesting so I can be on the lookout for my things since other departments will mostly be looking first for their bugs and reactions to their departments. After getting this advice I immediately spoke to the Design Lead Jackson and asked to be in and present at the playtesting. Jackson and I also talked about the idea of "active playtesting" where playtesters say out loud what they're doing and why. Basically, this approach vocalizes why a player performed those actions and what they're thinking at that exact moment.

Furthermore, Jackson wants to record these sessions as well so we can look back with 100% accuracy and see each of the playtesters' opinions. The other thing I worked on this week was putting together a master list of items that are set to be implemented or already implemented in the game with their respective descriptions. I also gave Josh one of our engineers the task last week to get me a living document of all the items that are set to go into the game next so I can prep multiple descriptions for them. This helps because we can simply copy and paste the descriptions straight into Yarn Spinner when needed.  My next step is to keep up with both making new journal entries and creating new item descriptions without creating a backlog from poor time management.

Until next time,

Nate