We demoed Intrusion Protocol at a booth at two St. Louis Science Center events before we released to the general public, and I’m so glad we did. The player feedback from those two events helped us identify items that we definitely needed to fix before releasing to the masses. One thing I quickly noticed while demoing is a few spots where we had to give some verbal instruction. “Press this button.” “It may be easier to skip that.” Right off the bat these players showed us things we needed to tweak without even knowing how much they were helping.

Of course, we also got direct feedback from players. While we were nervous to do our first demo booth, we were very happy with the amount of positive feedback we got. Not one person hated the game. Everyone seemed to have the urge to keep going and get to the end, which is exactly what we were going for. However, they also told us things that they thought were unclear, frustrating, or simply not good. Once we collected that feedback, we had a clear list of improvements to make.

Okay, so just add these things and put out the demo. Simple, right? Well, not so fast. Some of these things are easy fixes. Others, not so much. We had a long meeting about what we needed to prioritize. For each item, we had to balance necessity and difficulty. This was the most difficult part of the process. Let’s start with the no-brainers.

Pain border: Players had a hard time telling when they were getting hurt by the enemies. We already had a number that pops up by the player sprite when damage occurs. Adding a red flash around the screen was relatively straightforward. Done.