A 9-year-old plays both LoreQuest and Nora and the Impossible Homework

[wjt]

This weekend, we had some friends over, and I watched their 9-year-old play through a big chunk of the game. He's not a massive gamer but he has played games like Cities: Skyline on an Apple laptop, and other games on a Nintendo Wii. He speaks only English. (His 7-year-old brother also played a little, too. I'll note specifically when I'm talking about the younger child; otherwise assume that “he” refers to the 9-year-old. My kids were also watching. It was a fun group activity.)

He was playing Threadbare 0.1.5, installed on a Steam Deck, connected to a TV, using an 8BitDo Xbox-style controller. (There was no keyboard or mouse connected: this was a console-like experience.) For me the time that went into making the game onto Flathub and making it run well on Steam Deck has already been fully repaid because this testing session would never have happened if I'd had to get everyone around my laptop, fiddling with the keyboard, accidentally Alt-Tab-ing away, etc.

Between them, the children played the two LoreQuests (musician + void), and Nora and the Impossible Homework. I showed them a quick run-through of Stella.

Although the notes below of things I think we could improve are extensive, the children's feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The older child's feedback included “amazing”, “9.9/10”, “I will ask my parents to buy this game when it comes out” (good news for him, it's available now and free!), “can we play the game more when we get back from the playground”. Both children enjoyed it, even though they're a little younger than we're targeting. By the way, this is one reason our content guidelines err on the side of keeping darker content outside of LoreQuests: in general, families with teens may also have younger children who will see the game being played; and in particular, keeping the game suitable for younger children gives me easier access to a pool of playtesters!

General notes

Both children are familiar with the Nintendo-style controller, where the button labelled "A" is on the right, rather than on the bottom on the Xbox-style controller they were using.

I think we should either have an always-visible bar at the bottom of the screen which shows which actions are currently possible (and move the "talk" interact prompt there); or move the button hints onto the actions (i.e. put the A texture into the "talk" prompt, and into the "next" button in dialogue).

We could also make it so that, e.g. when paging through dialogue, the skip action can also be used to press next.

Fray's End

He picked the "wrong" elder at first: the purple StoryQuest Elder rather than the bald LoreQuest Elder. Of course there's no right or wrong but I think playing the main quests is probably a better first experience, particularly when half of the StoryQuests are not intelligible to him.

I've seen this before. I wonder if we can rearrange the scene so that people tend to pick the LoreQuest Elder first, before branching out into StoryQuests. This would also be consistent with the suggestion to split the template to a third Elder. #964

Music puzzle

One of the problems with this puzzle is that there's no visible indication when you have a partial solution to the puzzle. For instance the first melody is 1, 2, 3, 5. If you play 1, 2, there is nothing to indicate that you're on the right track.

He barely spoke to the musician, but when he did, the musician's dialogue is actively misleading. For the first puzzle, his first hint is to play "1, 2". His second hint is to play "1, 2, 3". But neither of these are correct: if you do what he says, nothing happens. Then his third hint simply tells you the answer. (The first two hints might be useful if there was some indication that you've played the first half of the melody correctly.) Both children ultimately solved the puzzle by interacting with the altars and copying what they saw. IMO this is barely a puzzle at this point.

His brother found it very easy to accidentally hit the wrong rock. The rocks are weirdly scaled down - #679 - so maybe we can make them a bit bigger. Maybe we could also do something fancy with the camera so that the whole puzzle is always on screen while you are in that area.

The crops in this level are scaled bushes. We replaced the crops in Fray's End #677 and we should do the same here. #1330

Ink combat

The ink-blob texture has a brighter and a darker region. At least on the Steam Deck + TV combination, the purple blob was a single solid colour. I can't reproduce this at all on my laptop so I'll have to go and take some screenshots.

Partly because it is possible to complete the first round of combat without repelling ink, both children got to round 2 of combat and then did not understand what they were supposed to do. On that level there is no hint that you can press A to repel, but you need to do that in order to complete the level. (See above on persistent input hints.)

Once they got the hang of it, both children enjoyed this.

Stealth

They both got the idea that yellow paths are where you are supposed to go (though they thought that you were always safe when standing on a yellow path and found out the hard way that you're not) while pale green paths are where the guards walk.

When you are defeated and respawn, StoryWeaver is hidden behind the KnitWitch. Both children were confused by this. #1332

If a guard catches you while facing away from you, the "biting" animation plays without being flipped horizontally. #1333

They found this level really challenging, particularly the last section. And again, because the "run" hint is only shown at the start of the level, both children had forgotten that it is possible to run by the time it became necessary.

The younger child got stuck at this section:

He kept trying to reach the right-hand side of the island, rather than going down. I think it's because at the point you respawn, you can't see the yellow path below:

Perhaps with a fancier camera, we could dynamically adjust its boundaries to push more of the level into view at this point.

There are also some bush-crops here that we should replace with vegetables. #1331

It is possible to get caught by two different guards at once. When this happens, the level reloads twice. It looks janky. #1334

Sokoban

Both children skipped the intro dialogue and then were stuck because they didn't read the instructions! Perhaps useful input for #491

It would be useful if there was some visible indication that you've made the puzzle unsolvable. #489

Both children really wanted to use the joystick so kept hitting #1186, no matter how many times I told them that this bug makes it impossible to play with a joystick.

When you solve a puzzle, the screen immediately fades out. There is no victory fanfare, no celebration. It feels very abrupt.

The RNG happened to pick the same set of puzzles three times in a row. #1205

Void

The 9-year-old (the only child to attempt it) completed this level in 2 attempts. The first time, he walked to the right without talking to the villager or reading the sign, and then was immediately caught. The second time, he talked to the villager, held down the run button, and easily completed it.

Previously the level was found to be too hard. Perhaps in #1239 I made it too easy! But I think it's fine, we can make the level longer if we want to add more challenge.

They all found this level really exciting.

Grapple

We already knew that gamepad controls need work here, and the children playing this made it clear that that's true.

Sometimes the left stick can be used to control the grappling direction, but other times it can't, and I don't really know why.

IMO we should try changing the control on joypad so that the right stick aims, and the right trigger (R2) "fires" the string. Unlike on keyboard, we have access to two directional inputs: we should use them!

On PC, I have a nasty feeling that we are going to have to switch back to using the mouse for directional input, and just accepting that the controls don't work well if you only have a laptop trackpad where input is ignored while you're pressing keys on the keyboard (palm rejection).

Input issues aside, they both really enjoyed collecting buttons and watching the player zoom around the level when they linked up a series of needles to a pin at the end. This mechanic is really fun in a way that e.g. the music puzzle is not.

Nora and the Impossible Homework

These are all school-age children so they really connected with the themes here. They chose this quest themselves from the StoryQuests available.

Lots of the assets flicker in an unpleasant way as you move around, particularly the paper textures with 1px solid lines. I think this is because the cameras are set to 1.4× zoom. I think we can just reset the zoom and the levels will both look better and be more fun. #1329

I found it a little weird that you can walk through the desks. Looking at the collision shapes now I think it's deliberate - I think the idea is that you are hiding under the desk. Perhaps it might look better if the sprite position were tweaked slightly so that y-sorting places you visually under rather than above the desk sooner.

The sequence puzzle is unusual in that remembering the musical notes is not enough: you have to remember the position in each group of 4. The children all enjoyed doing this! But the book changing to have a star on its cover was too subtle: they didn't notice that they had solved the first step correctly. The objects are also perhaps a little too close together.

In all of Nora's animations, the shadow at their feet is fully opaque rather than being semitransparent. It would look much better with an alpha channel.

[wjt]

@pierinamb @AlealarcViva your work on #1177 to add controller input hints was essential; without it the children would have really struggled at various points, but as it was I was able to sit back and the children mostly figured out the controls for themselves. Thank you!