Lycanthrope: Playtesting reflection
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Hello! My name is Mattias Borgqvist and I am currently working on a shoot em up game based on the concept document “A game of beelonging” by group Ouroboros. This week I will discuss my view on how playtesting has affected our development and how we went through with the testing itself, also if I think the result from the playtesting was useful or not So how does the playtesting affect our development? Well it gives us a good benchmark to test if our game is good and that it gives the players the feelings that we want them to feel or not but, it is also a good way to get ideas from outside your own development group since it gives other developers the chance to give feedback on your game. What we did is that we did not relay on survey but instead we had ongoing conversations with everyone testing our game since, if your present questions in form of a survey or such you lock the tester down and limit their thought process. By having living conversations with our testers, we got some very useful feedback that we ourselves had not thought about for example that it was hard for new players to grasp the controls and my as lead sound designer got to know that our energy pick-ups sounded to much like picking up coins, so some player thought it were currency and not energy. We now have a new system which is easier for new players to grasp and it better displays that the pick-up charges the energy bar. Even though playtesting is a good way to get critique on your work it can also bring up some confusion and discussions because all feedback and is not good feedback, you have to take into account that you may have more knowledge in the field than some testers and therefore it is crucial to have discussions afterwards and decide on what “problems” to fix and which ones that you want to keep as they are. Playtesting is of course a very good tool and something I think all game makers shall take part of because without it your games will fail, get feedback and iterate on that! That was all from me hope you enjoyed the post Best regards, Mattias Borgqvist  |