8th of March
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I guess it is to be expected that the first digital game we create during our education would highlight the fact that making games is really difficult. As such, the intended end goal of this course is probably not to have us create great, or even half decent games, but rather to make sure that we learn something from the process. That being said, I thing that we as a group has failed to utilize the playtesting sessions in a meaningful way. I think this is mainly because we didn’t focus on creating a “minimum viable product”, which caused the game to lack very fundamental parts of the gameplay until very late in the process of making it. This meant that the feedback during the Alpha playtesting generally revolved around mechanics or parts of the game that was missing very important components, or that was already going to be completely reworked. As such, the feedback was unfortunately not very valuable. Additionally, since these fundamental mechanics have taken so long to implement, we haven’t had the time to tweak or even properly review the gameplay. On the other hand though, I’ve certainly learned some lessons about how to schedule a project properly as a result of all this. I am now also much more familiar with the importance of making sure to create a fully working prototype of the gameplay before continuing to developing the rest of the game. Playtesting is a tremendous help, and frankly I do not think that 2 sessions is nearly enough. The creators are, as we’ve been told during the previous game design course, their own worst playtesters. I think there are mainly three things that we as a team could’ve done to allow for constructive playtestings, and to avoid our current situation: It has to be said that, even though it would’ve been lovely to have a more robust and confident game at this point, it is perhaps not all doom and gloom that the first digital game we make during this program is highly flawed and that the process of making it included a couple of failures. I’ve mostly had fun making this game and I’ll surely miss my team when it is completed.
5SD064
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