This is an excerpt from a longer post on IncidentDweezil.com

Feature Motivation

There's been many times in my life that motivation revolved around the notion of 'wouldn't it be cool to make this feature / mechanic' and though it's fun to rise to the challenge and finally see it in action, unfortunately that motivation lessens once the mechanic is mostly complete.

The "Adventure Banter" mechanic naturally hust happened, evolving out of having dynamic momments when writing dialogue for the multiple characters while they yak with each other during the adventure, so it wasn't even a "Mechanic To Implement" in my mind, it just happened and turned out really cool.

Maybe I shouldn't have put a label on it? Perhaps I shouldn't even blog about it and riskthat tricky 'simple brain thinks thing done because talk about it' but I feel confident at the time of this writing that it's an integral and completed enough, that progress will continue on it with being part of the foundation of the adventure.

Absurdity for the Win

I'd like to also mention that alongside 'intriguing, cool sounding ideas' I'm very prone to adding a thing while chortling "It's so stupid. Hah hahahah heh heh heh." and I'm more than okay with that.

These absurd / stupid things are some of my favorite things to add, and hopefully it has the same effect on the players!

Fun for Most

A lot of ideas for this game stem from moments while playing other games and I ask myself 'Why does the game not do this things the other way?' and sometimes I learn the answer is 'because it's not fun at all to play the game that way.'

But if I don't think my way out of it.... sometimes I try to include it in the game, and ultimately leaving it up to the player to determine.

That's the nice thing about PlayTesting's precious feedback to help steer the game out of the 'Coder made with Coder sensibilities' depths and into the 'fun for most' shallows. Hopefully this will be especially apparent with the puzzles not so much being "original, brilliant and fascinating" but "rewarding players who have a suspiscion of their action resulting in progress, a familiar joke or a new joke of approximate value."

As challenging as puzzles can be, I really hope at the end of any play session the player feels 'Dang, I can't wait to get back, solve that pesky puzzle, and move on to the next funny moment / story beat' as opposed to the 'Frickin puzzle! I know I can figure it out!' kind of rage progression.

Early / Late Game balance

Another one of my concerns is having the early game 'too heavily involved and flush' while the later game is more goal orientated and feeling sparse.

When trying to introduce the playe to the world's rules / lore / etc… I figure it's necessary to have 'more visuals / interactions / yak / etc…' so the player can get to know the world and what to expect is 'rational'.

Personally though, as a player, I like it when the end-game boils down to a less cluttered scenario, keep the pace / andrenalin / dopamine hits of 'gitting stuff done' and relying on the skills / rules established early on needing to be applied in new ways. This is counter to late-games where 'new mechanics are suddenly thrust on the player' or 'everything is turned on it's head' which too often feels like padding.

But, being a human, I'm incredibly picky about this notion, because I'm also not in love when games feel like the endgame, but suddenly force you to do a somewhat arbitrary backtrack quest that consists mostly of regurgitated content / gameplay, and has that gutfeel of 'padding things out' when the scenario that caused the backtrack doesn't have any kind of merit, prelude. Eg: "Suddenly someone stole the MacGuffin you acquired 20 hours ago. Go get it again."

So it's tricky, and each player's own experience / frame of reference affects their perception, so will Incident Dweezil feel like 'I'm about to finish it! Woo!' or 'Gawd, I know I'm close to the end, just wrap it up already!' I guess we'll see!