I've put the video version of this dev log on YouTube here, but there is a slightly expanded text version of the same thing below:

These are some randomly assorted thoughts on Zofia.

I haven't done a development log in a long while here. There are some good reasons for that but I'm not going to talk about it at this time, but there will be some context lost between the last dev log and this one.

~Magic~

Right now the extent of magic is: If you press the magic key on a surface, you can interact with that magic in a few ways.

I wanted to greatly increase magic's capability but its also one of the more confusing elements for a lot of people. I see some testers walk away saying they aren't quite sure what will happen when they press the magic key on something. On the other hand, some really like experimenting with magic and are thrilled to find new ways to use it. So I'm unsure about making any changes to it right now and will probably leave it as is.

I'm actually not a huge fan of the spells you can carry around but they're functional, and people seem to like them.

~Airships~

There are currently a few 'airship' levels within Zofia, and these aren't well distinguished between the other levels. These ones require the use of the airship while the main levels do not.

I feel these maps are in a weird position - They aren't big enough to really let you properly explore, and the airship mechanics are not fleshed out enough for it to really shine.

Its worth noting the airship levels are more popular in co-op than single player, while the more linear levels are the opposite.

I think if I had to do these all over again, I would have made these maps much, much larger with the intent that you would do much more optional exploring.

~Levels~

Feedback for Zofia has been pretty frontloaded. I get a lot of people that play the first few levels and then when it starts to get a little barebones, they usually stop playing. This has led to a lot of focus being placed on the early game, and not a lot on the late game.

I would say the first ~4 areas are probably the strongest levels, while the last ~2-3 are probably by far the weakest levels.

Testers have said they like the sprawling, multi-route areas like the Frozen Fort, so that's something I'd like to try and work a little into more areas.

~Feedback~

Feedback is actually kind of wonky. We don't get a 'lot' of feedback and its often only about specific things. We originally had a life system where if you died 3 times, you fail the level and have to restart it.

I'm not looking at the timeline, but that design was in the game for probably about 2 years before we got our first response to it - Which was basically 'hey this kinda sucks'. We switched it to losing money when you die, which I haven't heard anything about so I hope its ok.

There's probably some other glaring flaws or issues that I just haven't noticed because I'm too close to the project to see these things.

~Combat~

There's a lot to say about combat, so I'm going to try and sum it up real quick.

I think the combat is just 'ok'. I think the weapons and armor need a little more flavor, and I wish there was more enemy states - Such as being able to knock them down, or more elemental effects.

The context of the game story has you fighting a lot of Legion-ish (armored guys) enemies and, in hindsight, I wish I had dove into more magic enemies and monsters.

There was some fights against larger enemies, but this has been hard to make it feel right in first person as your viewpoint may be a little limited. Especially on the Otters who are only half the height of a normal person.

~Character Customizing~

I've seen this brought up a few times and I think its worth mentioning. Zofia is a pretty largely scoped game, but when it comes to your character, you actually have kind of a narrow scope. Your origin is always a part of the Legion, you're always going to be blighted, and you're always a seeker.

As a comparison, this would be the equivalent of playing a Dungeons and Dragon's campaign but you always have to play a paladin with a specific oath.

We had a brief discussion about different classes, but having different classes would mean adding many different solutions to things, which would blown up the scope. There's nothing wrong with classless characters either, but I would like to see a little bit of specialization.

These are just random thoughts on things that I am looking at. I could be off the mark on these.