Post #5 – Playtesting

What?
Since the very beginning of the ongoing course we have conducted three types of playtesting:
(a) Playtesting conducted by the members of team Siren (i.e. the developers of the game)
(b) Online playtesting (previously mentioned in this post) via this website.
(c) Course-related playtesting workshops
How?
(a) As well as (b) has been ongoing continuously, on a daily basis and communicated to the team either (a) by the team itself or (b) via e-mails/google forms.
(c) has happened on two occasions so far, on Monday (12/2-2018) which I wrote about […]

Using data to improve Gameplay

There have been two official playtests conducted at Uppsala University Campus Gotland for this course of Game Design 2. We have used these playtesting opportunities to great effect, and the tools that have aided us most is the fundamentals that we were taught early in the course. Using the MDA we have throughout the project tried to keep our eyes focused on our Aesthetic goals. These goals define the feelings and the experiences we want the player to have while […]

Playtesting

During project that we’re in, we’ve had two playtesting sessions where all the teams get together and try each other’s games. We had a survey that the participants were encouraged to fill out after they tested our game. We used the same question for both occasions in hope to see what the difference would be. On top of the survey we documented reactions and in game behaviour while they were playing.
The first session was unfortunately affected by an error that […]

Lycanthrope: Playtesting reflection

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 […]

Design-Build-Test-Learn

Play testing is an essential part of game design. Game design, like any other design follows a cycle of design, build, test and learn.
The never ending cycle of design
Play testing and the analysis of the observations made during it represent the last two steps in this cycle. To be able to evaluate the design decisions in the game it is important to let “outsiders” (people that are not in the development team) test the game. The reason that this is […]

Playtests & Feedback

Playtesting is an important thing in part of any game development project to ensure a quality product, and without it you are designing and iterating in the dark. This can also be an example of what happens when playtests don’t go exactly as planned, which was what happened in our (Team Vampire’s) case.
Over the course of the production for Umibozu, we had to playtests which happened with a varying level of success. The Alpha only suffered from some minor issues […]

Playtests & Feedback

Playtesting is an important thing in part of any game development project to ensure a quality product, and without it you are designing and iterating in the dark. This can also be an example of what happens when playtests don’t go exactly as planned, which was what happened in our (Team Vampire’s) case.
Over the course of the production for Umibozu, we had to playtests which happened with a varying level of success. The Alpha only suffered from some minor issues […]

The Importance of Playtesting

Hello once again!
Fredrik here and today I will talk about the importance of good playtesting. It’s something that has been said again and again but the real significance isn’t really felt until it’s tried. It’s just one of those things that you have to experience for yourself. As for our game, we have gotten a lot of very good feedback from both of the playtests that we held, some of those things that related a lot to my work were […]

Playtesting…1..2..3…

Alpha and Beta presentations are done and the clock is ticking for the final submission. Every group has implemented most of the assets and now the final polishing is underway. Like others, we are almost done, only left with a few tweaks and bug fixing.
Playtesting had played a very crucial role in the development of the game “Fear is in me”. The first playtest was an utter failure. In the first playtest session before the alpha presentation, our group could not […]

Blog 5

Working with playtests and feedback
So the topic for this week is playtests, and for that I will tell you how we have playtested our game as well as how that affected.
Footage from the Alpha build of the game.
For the Alpha-playtest we had one enemy, one power-up and the player who can move and shoot. At this stage we had not yet implemented the fog system which is a key part of our game concept. Therefore it was difficult to ask […]

Importance of playtesting

One of the most important parts of working scrum or agile in general is iteration, and one of the most important parts of iteration is feedback. How else would you know what to change and re-iterate? This is where playtesting comes in. It is one of the most important aspects of making high quality games, games where every single feature just feels polished and well thought out.
The playtesting settings we’ve had have provided our group with great feedback, not only […]

Playtesting and how Sirens rose from exhaustion

When playtesting, having a clear focus and idea about what you want to test is vital. Our beta playtesting was focused in one aspect of the game: Powerups.

We couldn’t come to a conclusion of what would be best for the game, and in consequence to the player: Power-up as instant pickups, or power-ups as innate abilities that you could activate with the use of energy. Making a decision about this was important, as the design of animations and assets depended […]