With A Weekend in Puzzleburg now less than three weeks from release, this is a good time to reflect on how I think the game turned out before the reviews start coming in and influence my perspective.  So these are my own thoughts now that the game is complete (save for some playtesting and bug fixing) before putting it out there.

I was recently asked what I'm most proud of about the game, so that's probably a good place to start:

1. The books - Since reading a book is a common vacation activity, I wanted that to be something players could do in the game.  As a result, I wrote three books, and the player will choose one to read throughout their vacation.   I wrote an entire blog post about the book system here, so I'll simply say that I'm very pleased with how this system turned out, and I think it's the number one reason why people would re-play the game

2. The hint system - I wanted to make sure that everyone who plays A Weekend in Puzzleburg is able to finish the game if they want to.  One thing that I felt could sink the game is if there's some main-quest puzzle that serves as a difficulty spike and prevents players from progessing in the game.  So I figured the game needed some sort of hint system players could use if/when they want it.  What I really like about the hint system is that it's built right into the setting, with the hotel concierge always being ready to deliver a hint.  It doesn't matter what quest you're doing or where you are in that quest, the hotel concierge has a unique piece of dialog to point you in the right direction

3. The characters/dialog - What really carries the game in my opinion, though, is the characters and dialog.  A lot of what you're doing in the game is talking to characters, so if this was a weak point, that would probably sink the game right there. I think people will really like the characters and dialog in this game

And now for some things I wish were better, just to balance the scales against the positive things listed above:

1. The graphics - I think the graphics in A Weekend in Puzzleburg are merely passable. They get the job done and don't get in the player's way (e.g. if you're looking for City Hall, you'll probably realize it's the building with a big clock on it), but they don't really stand out in the sea of video games.  And there are certain instances in the game where I decided to fade to black and use some minimal text to describe what's happening (e.g. when watching TV or taking a boat ride). In those cases, I figured I wouldn't be able to do a good job creating images that show what's happening, so better to not attempt that than to try it and do it poorly.  Thankfully, this only happens a few times and the player will probably be far enough into the game that they're bought in to what the game is doing by that point

2. Job class usage - I really like the job classes available in the game since they're all modern professions that don't show up in video games much (especially things that wouldn't exist in fantasy or sci fi RPGs).  I originally envisioned that certain quests would be able to be resolved in different ways based on your job class (and those quests would also have one or two ways that don't rely on job class), but in the end, I felt that players would always select the method that is unique to their job class, so I largely moved away from that idea.  But in its place, the books took on a greater importance as the primary method for why someone would want to re-play the game (as opposed to being able to resolve a quest in a different way), and as you can see above, I think the books turned out really well, so it's not all bad news here

That's it for now.  There are only a few short weeks until A Weekend in Puzzleburg releases on Friday February 17, so please wishlist and try out the free demo on Steam here until then: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1929760/A_Weekend_in_Puzzleburg