As usual, I'll break it down into three categories: (1) players acquisition, (2) what I'm learning about vibe coding, and (3) actual gameplay updates (this will be in the comments)
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First, my Reddit posts are getting less and less attention (not surprising) but actually having way more success on the player-front. I received some really valuable feedback a couple weeks ago from Redditors and someone named BingusDingus (that's his IGN, at least).
Basically their input was that the intro sucked, users were met with a wall of text instead of helpful instructions, and received no context of the story game arc.
So that became my next focus point. And once I put up an interactive tutorial instead of an instruction manual, my user retention went from 35-45s per new users to now sitting around 4min per player (median), and averaging 23min of total playtime per player.
Even more surprising -- I've had 63 players in 10 days, and 5 of them have spent over 2 hours each. I had a great convo with one of them (BingusDingus) but the other fellas are a mystery. Once has players a dozen different times by himself. So, kinda strange, but exciting.
That all said, either I'm getting tired of my game or I've just been staring at it too long. So I would love more feedback on that first 5min and whether or not there's a "hook".
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Second, the vibe coding experience. I have many friends saying basically the same things - which is that ChatGPT Sol is way better at communicating and designing interfaces but is simply untrustworthy for big tasks. Meanwhile the Reddit communities seem to vent about how awful Fable is and how amazing Sol it. So I'm a bit mystified on whether I should try switching.
Either way, I've switched my strategies a bit and use Fable for a LOT, and only use Opus 5 for very specific tasks, and it's really helped with its ability to stick to a task and actually complete it.
My one massive painpoint is that Fable is GREAT with web design. But holy moley even when using Claude Design, the GUIs are just awful. Has anyone else had experience trying to make a good game GUI? I'm talking like, it's putting raw text over the active screen and so players can't even read it. It's like bad-bad haha.
Oh and one more thing - a strength of Fable's is actually balancing the game. If you give it the variables ahead of time. I found out very much by accident that my archer's had crits stacking for 15x higher than they should've, making them absurdly OP. Turns out I had 7 different skills stacking. It really screwed me when I realized I was using an overpowered hero to balance the game...
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I'd love more feedback for anyone interested. Links below.
Game: www.eldermyr.com Release Notes: www.eldermyr.com/release