In the meanwhile, the gameplay data are also pretty interesting. Since Proun has online highscores, I was able to collect quite a lot of statistics on which tracks were played how often and such. So, let's have a look!
Game modes
One million track times were submitted! I actually waited a couple of days with posting this to be just above that number instead of just beneath it, because yes, there is some magic in such a high number! ^_^
For starters: these numbers are lower than what people have really been playing: my highscore server was down for a couple of days directly after launch, so I probably missed around one hundred thousand highscores near launch.
The Championship Mode is where people could unlock things and have a proper game flow. I designed the difficulties to present a gradually increasing challenge with enough rewards (winning a race, unlocking a higher speed or new track) to keep people playing for a bit. So as expected, this is the mode that was played the most.
To my surprise, hardly anyone played the four player mode. Makes sense that few people play it, but only 0.085% of all the races? That is even less than I expected!
Two player splitscreen fared a lot better, though: 10% of the races were played there, which is a very nice score. The splitscreen is a lot of fun, so I am glad people tried it. Anything above two players required an extra controller, because keyboards cannot register a lot of button presses at once, so the low numbers for three and four player splitscreen do make sense.
I think the best game experience in Proun is the Time Trial. Trying to beat yourself, as your mind gets into "the zone" and your reflexes take over, is to me the most fun you can have with Proun. However, only 11% of the races were played in Time Trial, so I guess most players disagree with me.
Difficulties and tracks
Keep in mind that these numbers are not the number of people who played a track, but the number of highscores submitted. Most players played several races, or even dozens, and these are the total number of times each track was played on each difficulty.
Racing at the higher difficulty settings required winning the championship on the lower difficulties. The difficulties are called Fast, Sonic, Super Sonic and Speed Of Light.
7% of all the times submitted are on the highest difficulty. That may seem low, but I think that is incredibly impressive: unlocking that is really difficult, so apparently quite a few people were hardcore enough to get there!
Strangely, though, this number is higher than the number of highscores submitted for Improvisation #1: Dynamism. This is the bonus track that you unlock together with the highest difficulty. I thought beforehand that a new track is way more interesting than a new difficulty. Apparently I was wrong. I guess this is because this bonus track is not included in the Championship game mode: you have to play Time Trial or Single Race to play it. Since Championship is by far the most played game mode, it does make sense that more times were submitted for the highest difficulty than for the bonus track.
Interesting here is that Composition #1 was played a lot more often than Composition #2. I wonder why that is? I think this is a combination of two causes:
-In Championship mode, if you loose the first race, it is a good idea to start again right away and try the first track again.
-Quite a few people will have played the first track and then concluded that Proun was not for them, thus not playing the other tracks.
User tracks
I included tools with Proun for people to make their own tracks. Doing so requires 3D Studio MAX, though, so not everyone can. I had no idea beforehand what to expect of this. So far seven people have made custom tracks, which is really nice! I consider it a great honour that modders have done this and there are some true gems there! You can see and download the complete list of tracks created for Proun here: Proun User Tracks.
So, how often were these tracks played?
As you can see, Archipelago and Extrude were played the most by far. The main reason for this is that these are the only tracks that were available within a week after the launch of the game. That is when most people were playing. The other tracks came a lot later and thus got less attention. I keep advertising them through my Facebook, Twitter and blog though, so hundreds of people still play each track.
What I find really cool is that new tracks are still begin made. For example, only last week Smurfland Sky was released! That track is so new that it is not in these statistics yet.
Smurfland Sky by dll32
So, that's it for the gameplay statistics! One million highscores submitted, that's a whole lot! I endthis blog post with a cliffhanger: how did the Pay What You Want scheme do for Proun? See you next week!
