Introduction
Welcome to the first Penumbra: Black Plague developer diary! In this part we will focus on some of the improvements we have made to this stand-alone game since Penumbra Overture and elaborate on some of the game features.
Overture vs Black Plague
Black Plague is a sequel, however we did not just want to settle with what we had and only make minor improvements. Instead we aimed to really evolve as game creators and that has meant identifying imperfections in our previous game and remove them completely.
One of the challenges we've faced when creating a game, is that we become very attached to our creation and that makes it more difficult to objectively identify these imperfections. We also get used to the elements that make up a game and have a hard time imagining how first time player perceive specific features.
Examples of such imperfections are technical features, where improvements are easy to evaluate because we can use simple metrics (frames per seconds, visual quality etc) to determine if they are better then last time. At the same time there are other imperfections related to gameplay and the quality of a gaming experience where it is a lot harder to determine if and when these have been fixed.
Thankfully we have a great bunch of people trying out new ideas and we use their feedback to see if our improvements have been successful. We have also gained a lot of knowledge through the feedback from our first game, all of which has made us better at judging what works and what doesn't.
More to follow...
