Dev Diary: The True Meaning of Christm--Beta
Greetings, Interns!
As the holiday break arrives—bringing some well-earned rest for the Times & Galaxy development team—it seems prime time to share an update.
Times & Galaxy has entered its Beta milestone: the content is (mostly) complete, the scope is finalized, and the focus is now on polishing the overall experience.
“It’s a shift in our giant game, from creating content to making it good,” Creative Director Ben Gelinas explains. “We have so many words in this game, so much art—It’s huge. And with Beta, I'm finally getting a chance to step back and go, ‘What have we done?’”
The best robo journalists find moments like this.
To help figure that out, Times & Galaxy just wrapped up a round of “family and friends” playtesting. For the first time, the entire game was open to players beyond the developers, offering vital feedback on the gameplay experience.
And those early responses have been positive! Comments like "I love the aesthetic overall – “it's totally unique” and “I would die for Janitorbot” help the team know they’re on the right track. There’s been criticism too, of course: there are plenty of bugs left to squish before the game ships, and one playtester felt there were almost too many characters to meet. For now, that’s being considered a good problem to have.
The importance of these early responses can’t be understated: Beta is about getting a chance to feel how everything’s coming together, to check that every element of the gameplay experience is landing as intended.
“I think 99 percent of level design is like, ‘Does this feel good?’ Because everything will feel great, and then the moment something feels off, you immediately get thrown out of it,” Art Director Kate Craig says. “So it's just about sanding off all those edges and trying to make decisions that don't make you mad.”
This is why beta testing is important.
That goes not just for levels, but writing, artwork, game mechanics, and UI—the next few months will ensure that Times & Galaxy coheres into a fully-realized take on journalism… in space.
“It's really neat to see how it’s come alive,” Gelinas says. “This started out as a game that was very personal for me: it's mashing up my past career as a journalist with my present career as a game developer, but also bringing in a lot of my super weird interests like bizarre characters and humor and hyper-detailed settings. As I brought on other weirdos [to the dev team], this world and the game has expanded into something that is not just mine anymore. Everybody on the team has their own stamp on this thing.”