By Sloane Vega & Lisbeth Hackman
Somewhere out there, ten people just boarded a drop ship. They signed no waivers. Arnold was furious.
For weeks we had been building something a little unusual for a book company: a playable headquarters. The BravoBay HQ Tour is a browser game. No download, one click. You get to walk around the home base where David’s book characters hang out between stories. You land on the roof, show your backstage pass, and wander the visitor lounge, the Edge Archives, the lab, the hangar and the beach. You’ll want to stay away from the water.
Before we opened the doors to everyone, we handed out ten beta codes to ten trusted testers. Their job was simple: play it, break it, die in it, and tell us everything.
First impressions
The reactions started rolling in before anyone had even loaded the game.
“Wow!! Can’t wait to check it out!! Congrats on your newest creative adventure!”
Melissa
Then the playtesters got their hands on the controls.
“I really like the integration of full motion video, it felt like a pre-ride show at Disney.”
Joe
James takes the tour
As the drop ship circled to land on the roof of BravoBay HQ, James couldn’t help himself: “Oooh, that’s the coolest plane thing.”
Later, chased by a pack of wild hellhounds, he barely found an escape route. As he ran past Sloane the Intern, who was busy unloading her Merc III into the oncoming horde, James yelled out, “Get me out of here, lady! I can’t get eaten by that thing again!”
At the end, he collapsed back in his gamer chair and congratulated himself: “Boom! I’m so good at this game.”
His verdict afterward? “That was a great game…thanks for letting me play it!”
What they ran into
We won’t spoil much, but here’s a taste of what the testers were up against:
- A warm welcome. Sloane meets you on the roof. If you keep coming back, she gets a little less warm each time. Visit nine times and you’ll see what we mean.
- Kit Ryder in the Edge Archives. Walk up to Kit and she’ll turn, greet you by name, and offer to tell you about Skyberia. She might also ask you to switch on an exhibit. Think carefully before you do.
- Hellhounds. We’re not saying anything breaks containment. We’re just saying there’s an emergency gun case in the lab, and a six-cell Merc III rifle inside it, for no reason at all.
- A three-minute escape. Getting to the ship before it leaves is your problem. Arnold is flying. “Hold on to your butts!”
Why testers first?
Every build of this tour was shaped by real play. David played each build, Sloane wrote the next build brief, and the engineers built it. Then we did it all again. Fifteen-plus builds later, we needed fresh eyes. Real players found what we’d stopped seeing: the door that wouldn’t open, the hound that clipped through a wall, the joke that didn’t land.
So we watched. Every bug report, every “wait, how did I die?”, and every hat trick (three hounds in one visit, and yes, there’s a stamp for that) went straight into the next build.
What came next
Testing ran through October. The testers worked through it level by level, and hellhound by hellhound. When they were done, the tour opened to everyone at thebravobay.com/hq.
Until then, our ten brave souls had the place to themselves. Arnold had a bad feeling about this.
So did we. It was a good one.
Sloane & Lis
Want in? Take the BravoBay HQ Tour, catch up on how it all started in the October newsletter, and join the newsletter so you hear about the next build first.
