Pragmata took a lot of playtesting, refinement and feedback and it paid off

Pragmata was announced a long time ago and many had thought the game canned due to its no show at various large game conferences. Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case and whatever the development team did paid off as the final product was top-notch. One of the things that the developers at Capcom really wanted to nail down was the controls as they are split between shooting and hacking.

The game’s producer Naoto Oyama said it was important to get this right as “there’s only so many buttons on a controller.” The controls needed to be simple and intuitive and not cumbersome. Because of this the game spent a lot of time in playtesting being refined and getting feedback to make sure that the controls felt as natural to the player as possible. He admits that “balancing all this was very difficult” but it ultimately worked and naturally the team “got great results” with the end product.

“There are only so many buttons on a controller, so we’ve worked to ensure the controls are simple and intuitive. In the early stages we’ve limited the maximum number of enemies that appear at once and slowed down their approach speed, so that players can get used to the basics of hacking and shooting at the same time. As the game progresses and players become more accustomed to the controls, new weapons and actions are unlocked, while the number and strength of enemies change, so players gradually get used to performing multiple actions simultaneously.

Balancing all this was very difficult, and took a lot of playtesting and refinement, including regu”larly getting feedback from first-time players. I think this approach worked and we got great results.”