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Playtesting is key in an Agile development cycle, it’s a good way to make iterations of your game fast. So that you always know if something works and is fun to play as soon you have it in a testable state. As the game designer of the group I have tested the game a lot over these weeks, and I also built the level. So after I while I know the map and the game so good that it isn’t a fair representation of the game for me anymore. As I know everything from how the level looks, where things are, what to look out for etc. And as our game focus on the navigation, knowing where to go doesn’t give you that feeling of being lost. That is why outside playtesting is key, so you don’t only get feedback from people who knows the game and have a inside look to the game’s inner working.
Our public test during the course was a failure, due to an unfortunate bug in our collider code. Which meant that we couldn’t get any feedback on our Beta-build this time around. But we did have an functional Alpha-test that we got feedback on and could work with. We have also sent out our game to people outside our group to get feedback from after the Beta was done.
One thing that has come up from multiple testers is that our camera being locked to the boats orientation, so that the boats front always is pointing upwards. That this gets people a bit nauseated and disoriented.
Here is a .gif on how the oriantation in the game looks.
And it’s not a good thing that they feel sick when playing the game, but at the same time it really enforces the feeling of being lost at sea (and maybe you can explain the nauseating as seasickness), which was one of our desired aesthetics of the game. That it should be hard to navigate through the rocky ocean and that you had to rely on activating your compass.
One thing we also found out during our local playtests is that the harpoon we had in the game didn’t make much sense and didn’t really fulfill a purpose other than activating the guidance rocks. As shooting the monster that hunts you wasn’t something we liked. So, we took that away from the player and tried to focus more on the navigation and the spotlight.
About Tim Wergeni Johansson
2017 Game Design
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