Your Guide in the world of Sun Stones

One of the central pillars of Sun Stones has been engendering a sense of exploration in the player.  Exploration drives the movement within the game, our introduction of stone mechanics, our writing aesthetic, our achievement and star mechanics, and more.  We carefully pull players through the game without pressuring them with specific goals, clocks, or thresholds.

In our recent glut of User-feedback, the calm atmosphere and potential for real learning at their own pace have been two of the most-appreciated elements of the game.

So of course we're changing them.

A small number of players tend to re-play puzzles over and over, trying for perfect mastery.  These players have been frustrated because the open-ended exploratory nature of the game does not lend itself well to dense information about performance over time.  Many iOS games focus heavily on the dense presentation of information, so Sun Stones, by comparison, seems a bit barren.  These players were often some of the most enthusiastic about our sparse aesthetic, so it's really a matter of wanting things both ways, rather than an indictment of how we're starting players off.

So our changes this week and last have been focused on finding a way to change the way we feed information to players, without changing anything for players who don't go specifically looking for dense information.

Navigating the Glyph Wall

The central hub of Sun Stones is the "Glyph Wall" - where players select a glyph to visualize, and create patterns over time from the glyphs they have finished.  These screens are simply groups of pictograms - touch one, and you are taken to that puzzle.  This is a very natural and simple way to navigate between puzzles for our players.  But some players want to know - which glyphs have I played perfectly, and which did I simply pass?  That information was available within the puzzle, but not visible on the Glyph Wall directly.  We considered putting additional information on the Glyph Wall - but it absolutely crushed our aesthetic to do so.

The solution we came up with was to create an "info box" mechanic.  If you touch a new glyph - you are still taken directly to that puzzle.  No change there.  If, however, you touch a glyph which you have already finished we bring up a small box with information about your past performance, and a small "Play" button.  This gives players a chance to check their past performance without leaving the Glyph Wall, but doesn't change our original play-experience for most players (who don't re-play puzzles).

We'll make the new version available to players soon.

Work Trumps Many Things

Making Sun Stones has been (and continues to be!) a lot of work.  Since this is the first game for our little company, we don't have the luxury of "regular income" during this development period.  That has meant a lot of sacrifices for not only those of us on the Sun Stones team, but also for our families.

I personally have been neglecting my partner Kealy Barrow more than I should, so I've started building a new habit to help remind me to pay more attention to her - whenever I notice that the numbers on the clock line up (2:22, or 3:45, or 11:11, etc) I take a moment to write her a note reminding her how much I love and appreciate her.

I sat down to write this weekly blog post for Sunstone Games and notices that it was 1:23pm.  So at the risk of confusing readers, I'm going to address the rest of this post directly to Kealy.

Kealy, I know that you're not anti-video games.  We've talked about how you bought a NES as an adult and ran Super Mario Bros. into the ground.  You've tried out some online games with me, and we've rocked our way through 4 Rock Band games.  But I think you are just now, after more than two years together, realizing that video games are a huge part of my life, and that you will need to have more than just a passing interest in order for our lives to continue to mesh so well.

Relationships require work, and compromise, and change.  We have both showed excellent understanding of those facts, but I think it's been hard on occasion (understandably so) to elevate "Play more Video Games" to the same level as "Make an effort to connect with my partner's friends" or "Prioritize the needs of the children."

Me being a developer certainly exacerbates this trend, because "creating" a video game requires far more focus and time than "playing" a video game ever does.  We've been working on Sun Stones for 6 months, and the initial interest and pride you exhibited in month 3 has had the gloss worn off.  Nobody would fault you for that. I saw a documentary about how people who are champion food-eaters train themselves to digest food slowly - because the digesting process contracts the muscles around the stomach.  Adjusting to the long cycle of game development requires a similar shift - you can't build too much enthusiasm too quickly, because it is a test of endurance.

It is obvious to everyone who knows you, Kealy, that you are motivated by intelligence.  You have passion, and you seek out ways to express that passion through your work, your lifestyle, and your interactions with others.  I too have passion, but it expresses itself in an unusual fashion - though the development of video games.  It is a leap of faith on both our parts to work together and support one another through both the endeavors we appreciate and those which don't speak to us directly.

I love you, Kealy.

Betas Away!

If you didn't already know from our Twitter feed, Sun Stones is officially in Beta as of December 31st, 2011.  We've already sent out more than two dozen beta invites to our contributors, but we're looking for as many eyeballs as we can get while we try to finish the game, so anyone with an online Android or iOS device should send an e-mail to:

test@sunstone.co




Our able-bodied team will set you up with your very own pre-release build of the game!

We're using TestFlight for this process, at least for iOS users, because they make it easy for us to register devices and get things working smoothly.  From the user's point of view, they just click on a link and our app installs on their phone - no messy ID numbers, or provisioning nonsense.

(All that "nonsense" still happens, of course, but TestFlight allows it to happen behind the scenes.)

Of course, getting the game into beta tester hands is only the first step - the second step is getting feedback about the game, bug reports, suggestions, etc.  To streamline that process we've set up a series of google forms: one for each type of report.  In our first 12 hours of beta we've already received more than a dozen responses to the forms, which is a great start.  We have some analytics in place within the game, so we can see (for example) how many levels have been completed by all users - but that's a very rough look at the experience players are really having, so insightful well-written feedback is critical to the beta process.

Our team is absolutely looking over every report in detail (maybe a bit too much detail) so this is a great opportunity for folks to influence the game with their opinions.