Hornet Leader - PC (DVG)

Right, and that’s why we built the help screens into each screen of the game the way we did; to keep away the “what do I do now?” syndrome common among many complex wargames. We wanted this to be a wargame the “average” non-wargamer could sit down and learn to play in a half-hour or so. And generally that held up true during testing.

We didnt need to field many questions during the testing about how things worked, because our testers all seemed to get it pretty quickly. A day or so, and most were speeding along pretty well on their own. Which tells me the interface can’t be that bad. :)

OK, now for the asshole curmudgeon side of things.

Jesus Christ, as a computer game, this thing had to be all about polish and a smooth, smooth UI. EVERYTHING ELSE WAS ALREADY THERE. The game design and structure, the A.I., everything. It should be a totally straightforward conversion of a lite solitaire boardgame, a six-month project at most, since most of the work should have been focused on designing a good U.I.

Exactly my sentiments.

I want to like the game, and if it was a well programmed and polished experience, I’d really enjoy it. $29.99 is a bit steep, however… for a polished game of this scope, I’m thinking 19.99 at most.

As it stands now, charging 29.99 for this mess is an insult.

The interesting thing is, we did have a couple of “curmudgeons” in there too. Long time older wargamers with military backgrounds and all. They were picky, and we did end up making a fair amount of changes. Once we were done, most were pretty decently happy with what we came up with. None thought it was flawless, but none thought it was a “mess” either.

A couple new AARs are up on the Matrix site.

We are collecting player feedback for the first patch. The plan is to fix a couple special event bugs and the interface issues mentioned.

We also hope to add some new features/content.

Just a note: A public 1.1 beta patch is out, and it fixes nearly all bugs, adjusts the difficulty, and does add the requested “view loadouts during Placement phase” feature too.

Nice turnaround time. Looking forward to checking it out.

Yep, this definitely won’t be a game that sits still for long periods of time. It will continue to be added to and tweaked with customer requests, just as my own games usually were.