Over the past few days, I've been lucky enough to have a few friends play the game and give me notes (and encouragement!) on it. Some of what came up were ideas I'd already considered while making the initial draft, but many were brand new, both obvious and really really clever. The current build contains some changes that came out of those conversations: 

• Pokemon now do a little bounce right before they dash away, giving you a heads up of when you're about to lose them. They also do their call, which pairs with their call when they arrive in their new spot, making them easier to track.
• They also scatter some leaves into the air, to make it easier to see where the mon activity is, or where an off-camera fleeing mon was positioned. 
• Scanning now takes longer for some mons, shorter for others. 
• Scanning FX improvements: scan sound pitches up in proportion with scan duration. Reticle "focuses" based on scan percentage. 
• Splash SFX and particles when you jump in the water. Not a mechanical improvement, but it's fun. 
• Disabled crouching, which was creating an enormous movement bug. 
• Moved the player's starting position to the top of the stairs to the lab. This will hopefully do a better job and leading you directly to Oak, while still feeling a little organic. 

I can't stress enough how instructive it is to watch somebody play your game live, whether you're in the room with them, or watching a screenshare, or whatever. People use character controllers in wildly different ways. They will look away from things you thought were directly in front of them. They will not hear the sound cues that are obvious to you. 

If I have one major takeaway from these playtests, it's that you can't go wrong putting redundant feedback and signaling into the game and level design. Make thing make noises, fire particles, do funny little animations, change colors, rumble the controller, flash lights, shakes the screen, or anything else you can think of. Players minds are build to wander, so you need a whole load of tricks to keep them focused. 

Thank you Robin, Ian, Milan, and Holly for sharing your brilliant thoughts with me and helping to make this goofy game better.