[Reblogged from Shakespearevideogame.com]
Earlier this month, we had the first playtest for the alpha version of the game, up in the gorgeous and glorious cafe of The Garage at Northwestern.
In this playtest, we were looking at the playability/intuitiveness of Macbeth’s walk and roll, his two attack strokes, and the balance of damage to him vs. his health replenishment (via contact with blood spatter).
Though we were just looking at mechanics, a couple of the playtesters happened to be familiar with Macbeth, the play. It was thrilling to watch them connect their gamer impulse to find exploits to their literary knowledge of the text, because they quickly realized they stayed alive longer by being sneaky and killing more enemies faster.
For the next build, you might see enemy assets replacing the shadows, a health meter, a scoring mechanism along the top bar, and a Rage Superhit that does REALLY BAD THINGS to everyone on screen.
Until then, please enjoy the video above of one of our playtesters trying to exploit a spawn point and then being revenged upon by the system.