Hello Stonefriends! We hope youve enjoyed the Quest Update so far. Dealing with squatting Stoneheads and frenetic frogs is no joke! Last Friday, we added Mr. Pallas Wild Ride, the first of many Legends to come. The Wild Ride Challenge Event will continue for a few more days (ending on October 10th), so youve still got a bit of time to complete your goals and your reward.* Since full completion requires use of the Mind Stone, you can consult our Discord community or see the Wild Ride forum post should you run into any problems finishing the event. *All loot gained through events can still be obtained in-game. Events may also repeat in the future.

StoneJam 4 Wrapup

A couple weeks ago, we hosted our fourth StoneJam, an event where community members gathered to create custom content using the in-game scripting language, Stonescript. We received all sorts of neat creations, including cosmetics, minigames, pets, and UI tools! Weve put together a video where we look at each submission, so you can see what kinds of projects people worked on: [previewyoutube=Ob60pbxtSqM;full][/previewyoutube]

Whats Next?

We've got more Legends to come in the following weeks (be on the lookout next week for "Remnants of Five"!). We plan to add a total of 16 Legends: full-scale adventures featuring unique narrative experiences.
Everything that gets added in the Quest Update further builds out Stone Story RPG as a whole. More events that will repeat, new mechanics and systems, and expanded Stonescript features are just some of the things that will become core to the final version of the game. Why are we staggering development like this? Well, were indiedevs! This is not meant as an excuse or a joke, but rather a sincere explanation. We are a small team that takes pride in the quality of our work, and Early Access allows us the opportunity to work in constant conversation with our players to iterate and improve on Stone Story. That kind of quality, however, calls for fairly rigorous testing and experimentation. Balance that with busy lives and a world thats on fire, and you can start to see why weve taken as long as we have. This is especially important when it comes to one of our primary concerns: Player Engagement & Fun.

The Game Funnel (light game spoilers)

Stone Story RPG is a niche game. ASCII-animated incremental auto-RPG with programming elements is a hard enough sell as it is, and while it helps us stand out it also makes it extremely challenging to get players invested. We receive lots of valuable feedback from you guys. What we don't receive is feedback from players who did not become engaged with the game. These are people who, for whatever reason, didn't have fun playing. They leave and don't come back, almost never giving the developers direct feedback. This might be the single largest challenge to solve as a game dev! No game can please everyone, but we know we can do better. To tackle this issue, we track a set of usage data that is both aggregate and anonymous. For instance, when players begin a new story, they all go through the first location, gather several items, then craft their first item. Those steps are added to a collective pool of data. Correcting for things like piracy, this tells us a statistical story of how players, as a whole, are interacting with the game and allows us to see where folks are getting stuck. This process is called Funnel Analysis, where science intersects with art, to inform some of our game design decisions. This tells us where problems exist, but not what those problems are, or how to fix them. What comes next involves some detective work.
We've identified and fixed several minor drop-off points, where players give up, but there is one STARK drop-off that persists. It appears right after upgrading your workstation, and we believe this is the Waterfall Puzzle, where currently 18% of new players are leaving (probably in frustration). The Waterfall Puzzle is a unique moment in Stone Story, since its one of the few times where we introduce a non-combat challenge. We've attempted various changes to solve the issue, with partial success. If we're going to crack this case it's going to take more than just a few text and number adjustments. We have to re-think the whole section.

Fun and Enjoyment, Through the Lens of Data

It's certainly hard to quantify "fun", but we believe Retention Rate gives us a measure of that, albeit indirectly. Retention in games is often expressed in the sequence D1 > D7 > D30, or what percentage of players are returning to play again after 1 day, 7 days, and 30 days.

• D1 retention is all about ensuring the game has a fun and engaging hook. Stone Story RPGs base game content can be completed in roughly 8 hours, meaning that someone can beat the game in about a day or so. The progression needs to be as smooth as possible, so fixing bugs and conveying the gameplay without confusion is crucial.
• D7 retention focuses on giving people a reason to come back. This is where things like Quests and higher difficulties come into play. The goal at this part of the experience is to expose players to the deeper parts of the game, where their breadth of choices unfolds to infinity. Our work with the Quest Stone and the 3.0 release is designed to boost this area of the experience.
• D30 retention focuses on the long-term. This is where we strive to get all our players: using Stonescript, creating custom content, theorycrafting, and generally being invested in Stone Story RPG as a whole. Community events are one way for us all to have fun at this stage of progression.

In terms of future development, we believe Green difficulty locations, quality of life systems, an expanding arsenal of complex items, as well as a new game mode are some of the ways in which Stone Story can deliver long-term enjoyment. We love data, as it helps us understand the full picture and keep improving!

Stone Story Worldwide

On TOP of retaining players, we spend just as much time ensuring that people all over the world can play the game. Were lucky to work with such a great localization team, Warlocs, whove made the game accessible in so many different countries. If youre a game dev and not localizing your game youre missing out on a HUGE audience. However, its not as simple as just translating! Good localization involves a deep understanding of dialogue, tone, and mechanics so you can properly convey it all to a completely different audience. Having Stone Story localized for so many languages doesnt just increase how many players we have; it also increases the amount of data we receive! Iteration and localization are all in service of the eventual ports and ensuring this can hit as wide an audience as possible. This process takes time and we ask that you please continue to be patient with us as we work to bring Stone Story RPG up to the ambitious vision we have for it.
--- Whew, that was a lot of text! If you made it this far, thank you for reading. Stone Story RPG continues to be a labor of love in an industry that demands so much for even a chance at success. We deeply appreciate every one of you that has stuck with us so far and continues to come back. Until next time! o/ -SSRPG Team

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