The Effects of Playtesting

Hi there people, playtesting is a great tool for improving the development process when making a game and I am here to tell you why.
Playtesting has bee very important for me and my group during the course of this project as it has given us invaluable information that can only be gathered through this kind of testing, namely the opinions of the end-users. As a part of the playtest we incorporated a survey for the players to fill out, rating […]

Play Testing

We got the chance to have our game play tested twice by our colleagues, once during the alpha phase of production and again during the beta phase, and during these play tests we had a survey for our testers to fill out where we asked them about the different aspects in our game like the different mechanics and controls, as well as the overall feel of the game.
Alpha play test:
During the alpha play test, we had our testers try out […]

Making one’s great ideas actually noticeable

As the name suggests, the core aesthetic of Friendship Down is friendship and comradery. In pursuit of this goal, the game was designed around a specific core mechanic: the player is given an activated ability that produces a shield with which the player can ward off enemy projectiles, potentially protecting both themselves and the Friends (allied NPCs that fight alongside the player. Within the context of the game these are referred to as the Friends). From this core design choice, […]

How has Playtesting effected my game’s development?

Hi, today I will be discussing why playtesting is an important aspect of game development and how playtesting has affected my game. Playtesting is the stage where a game developer tests a game for bugs and any design mishaps before releasing it to the public. Playtests can be run “open”, “closed”, “beta”, or otherwise. Open… Continue reading How has Playtesting effected my game’s development?

Blog 5: Playtesting

It’s always important that the players understand your game. To make sure of that, and to receive feedback and critique to improve your game, it’s good to have several playtesting sessions. When you are developing a game it’s often easy to become “blind” and not notice things that are unclear or don’t make sense in the game. We’ve had two playtesting sessions during the development of the shoot em up game, Alpha and Beta.
So, how did the playtesting affect my development?
We received […]

Week #5 PlayTesting

On three different occasions we have had our game play tested by the masses of Game Design 1 as well as the amount of play testing I have done myself for our game.
Having people play test the game you’re creating is a rewarding experience in general, if you look at it positively it is a win-win situation. Either they play the game and like the work you are doing, hate it and give lots of feedback, or are somewhere between […]

The importance of playtesting

Saying that playtesting is important for game development might seem like quite the obvious remark. And yeah, it kinda is. But the reasons it’s important isn’t always apparent to everyone. So I thought I’d talk a bit about what I’ve noticed while doing playtesting for my team’s current game.
Now this is only an assumption. But I’m pretty sure that when most people with a limited knowledge of playtesting hear the word playtesting they think of it as something developers do […]

Game Design 2: Blogpost #5, Playtesting

For this blog post I will be writing about how playtesting has affected the making of our game.
Throughout the Game Design 2 course there have been a total of 3 planned playtesting sessions (one of which was the final playtesting before the final deadline of the course), as a group we decided to make the most use of these as possible. For this we decided upon questions we wanted answered beforehand and made questionnaires that the playtesters would be able […]