Over the past couple weeks, we had the opportunity to run a few playtests of our game. It is important to note that we moved away from using WASD and now feature a completely text based input system that is inspired by games like Kings Quest. We are still in the process of iterating on this movement scheme and we will decide on the final movement setup before the Beta. The main points of feedback are as follows:

• It was confusing to tell when the player is talking to the console (to move, pick up objects, etc.), and when they are directly chatting to an NPC.
• After clicking accuse, the player should be able to go back.
• Players were often confused on what to talk about or do.
• Precise movements are harder with text based controls.
• Having a timer is too restrictive.
• NPC dialogue can be unfocused and NPCs can sometimes hallucinate.

So far, we have worked to address these issues by.

• Re-structuring the UI so that the locations of console and NPC outputs are in different locations, coupled with a sprite of the NPC on the UI.
• Players can now freely click accuse to look at their options and go back if they want to investigate more.
• We are developing the story further by breaking it down into smaller objectives. At each objective, the user can see what the objective is under the map, which will make it easier for the user to know who they should talk to or where to go. 
  • By breaking down the story more, we are also able to give more specific prompts to the narrator and the NPCs so that the player can get more helpful information for the stage of the story they are currently on.
• We removed the timer and are focusing on using these objectives to have more directed bite-size bits of the story that people at Level Up can play.

To-do:

• We are currently working on improving the text based movement system to allow for players to easily visit more points of interest, as well as move relative to their position like "Move right", etc.
• We are near finalizing our story structure. Afterwards, we will experiment more with prompt engineering as well as fine-tuning our local model to get better and more relevant dialogue from the NPCs.
• We are still looking to improve the UI, including the presentation of the buttons, display of the chat log, etc.
• The narrator can the objectives give users many hints on what to do, but we want to include more visual feedback and we're playing around with the idea of highlighting objects, using spotlights, etc.