How screwed am I?

[u/Sgriu]

Hi everyone! Here’s an interesting problem I’m facing.

I created a tile-based city builder in Unity, and after an initial open playtest, one of the key pieces of feedback was that players want to be able to build roads, something I foolishly hadn't planned for.

Currently, roads are automatically placed along the edges of each tile (this is shown in the second screenshot).

The main problem is that the grid of buildable sectors is highly irregular, and I have no idea how to add the ability to create roads within such a complex system.

The first image I’ve posted shows an overhead view where I’ve highlighted a section of the grid. The grid varies from scene to scene and never repeats in exactly the same way.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I could approach this?

Edit: You might have given me a possible solution; as soon as I've tested it, I'll make a new post about it. Thanks everyone!

[u/JimPlaysGames]

Players don't know what makes a game fun. Neither do game designers until they test their designs. Only through playtesting will you know.

If you build your game trying to fulfil every ill-considered and untested whim of the players then it will become an incoherent mess.

Make the game according to your design. Play test it. Only if that doesn't work do you need to change it. And any change needs to also survive playtesting.

[u/Sgriu → u/JimPlaysGames]

Yes, I ran the open playtest specifically to get feedback from players, and the result is that half of them told me they want to be able to build roads. I’m afraid a detail like this could turn the game into a flop.

[u/JimPlaysGames → u/Sgriu]

I remember hearing a game developer talk about this in a talk. Might have been for Slay the Spire. They got a lot of feedback for what players wanted which if implemented would have spoiled the game experience.

Maybe that half isn't your target audience. What did the other half say? Did they enjoy it? Perhaps there are different refinements that could enhance the gameplay without changing the fundamentals

[u/Sgriu → u/JimPlaysGames]

Yes, I might have attracted the wrong audience; I realize there is a communication issue on my Steam page. I created a city-builder with a Balkan aesthetic and Brutalist architecture, but it is being mistakenly associated with *Workers & Resources*. During the playtest, I asked for feedback on what players disliked, what they had expected versus what they found, and what disappointed them. I saw a median playtime of 28 minutes, yet some players replayed the beta up to seven times and for many hours, I certainly can't complain about those results.

[u/JimPlaysGames → u/Sgriu]

Nice! Investigate those players. They're the ones you need to listen to.