Portfolio Night Break Down

Having just gotten back from showing off Combo Princess at MATC's Portfolio Night I can gladly say that the night was a success. The event got a lot of hands on the game and I got to see everyone's reactions to different elements of the game. Things that I learned that I was doing right with Combo Princess were art style and the addictiveness of the game. Many people commented on how good the game looked as well as how it played once you figured out how to play. There were a number of problems that became apparent to me once other people started playing. The most glaringly obvious was that people still weren't understanding the basic mechanics of the game and that the pre-game tutorial was not effective. Players would often mash a combination of A and X before without killing a single duck. I would then have to explain the basic strategy of the game and many players still never fully grasped how to play it. This will be a challenge but if Combo Princess is to receive any amount of success this must be addressed in full. The second largest problem was that the upgrades were far to expensive. Most players would only get 10 - 30 coins per attempt till the got the hang of the game and after the they normally only got 50 - 200. Scaling those down will be easy I just need a guinea pig to test them. Thirdly, one player that was really keen on CP found himself exploiting the spawning gap near the top of the screen and would mostly stick to that area, diving in and out to kill some ducks. Not exactly sure If I should correct this problem or not. One thing that really blew my mind tonight was how difficult Combo Princess actually is. Only one player managed to make it out of the first area of the game. This makes me consider leaving that exploit in the game to prevent the game from being to hard. If I were to fix this problem I would probably put a duck missile node near the top of the screen  so that the player has a reason to dash down.  I hope to fix these problems and have the game ready for a proper launch in about a weeks time. I cannot wait.