Night of the Playtest news - Petrified mod for Half-Life 2

Last night (Saturday 01/31/09), we ran our very first open playtest of Petrified. This wasn't actually the first time non-devs got to play it, since several people got brief shots at playing early versions during presentations in November and December, but it was the first time any random goofball could walk in off the street and play. Things were a bit bumpy at first - we tried running a dedicated server for the first time, and it kept kicking people - but once we got that straightened out, it was a blast.

Things we learned:

• There is probably nothing out there more satisfying than successfully sneaking up on a Mortal player and ganking him/her.
• Smaller maps seem to be more fun
• Teamwork helps, but it doesn't make you infallible as a Mortal.

We also squashed a number of bugs and found a couple of minor features to add (for instance, making the statues transparent so that you can see terrain and players behind them).

So, how does Petrified work right now?

As you've probably gathered, there are two teams:

• Mortals, players looking to survive for a set length of time (default is 2min); they move with standard FPS controls, and can defend themselves with a flashlight beam that temporarily wards off attackers
• Watchers, players looking to stalk and convert all of the Mortals; they are effectively possessed statues. They can move by teleporting when not visible to the Mortals and "swapping" to possess other statues on the map.

In practice, the game plays out a bit like a creepy game of red-light-green-light. It's also got shades of zombie-survival, since defeated Mortals are converted to the Watcher side. The original design called for there to be a variety of statue types for the Watchers to possess, each with special abilities; for the moment, we've had to cut down to one statue with one special attack.

The beta should be out within the next two weeks - we'd like to implement some fixes and tweaks from the first playtests before it goes off into the wild. In the meantime, there'll be new media up, and we'll keep you posted on development.