Week 3 – Playtesting
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Welcome back everyone! This week all the first and second year students had the opportunity to have a bunch of people to test their game. The playtesting was on Friday so we spent the whole week trying to prepare so we could test as many aspects as possible. The feedback we got from everyone was amazing and we also got to test some of the other games, least to say we were impressed. To prepare for the playtesting I spent most of the week on creating a short level so we could test our input, graphics and the most basic gameplay. For the level design I aimed to create a first draft of the introduction level that will be built in the level we will be presenting in GGC. When I created this level there were a few things I tried to keep in mind. Firstly it had to contain the all the basic elements which were to guide the prisoner, distract guards and be able to plan a route. Note: Still a few placeholder assets in the level. The room to the bottom left is the prisoners cell, the green character is the prisoner that the player has to rescue and the exit room is the room with a sphere in the middle of the room, all the other rooms are either break rooms or laboratory rooms. In each laboratory room there is one object that the player can interact with to distract the guards. From the playtesting we got really good feedback, the most important was that we needed to change the controls in someway. To guide to prisoners through the facility the player has to click on the monitor (red box in the level) that the prisoner is standing by and then on the monitor that they want the prisoner to move to. This kind of input really confused some players and combined with a few bugs it really annoyed some people. The second most important feedback we got was that there was no indication of what the player can interact with. We expected to get this feedback as we have yet not implemented any kind of visual indication for the interactable objects. After the playtesting we all sat down and discussed all the feedback we got, some of the feedback we decided to dismiss and some we decided were important for us to consider. Thanks to the playtesting session we now know what we have to change and a slight idea of how as well. The entire next week we will continue on this level and prepare for the alpha which is next week. With the help of the feedback from the playtesting we will create a much better introduction level. Other than the level design I continued on the design as there are still a bunch of stuff that is yet not defined. I had a meeting with one of our teachers and talked about the different options and the consequences of each option and by the end of the two hour meeting I came out even more confused than before. What my teacher said gave me many more ideas for the game and so the cycle of confusion continued. Of each aspect I changed more options opened up. But in the end I was able to decide on a few things at least. I will not go into further detail for now, but they will come up in future posts. As I mentioned before, next week we have our alpha deadline so this week will be very stressful but hopefully we will be able to showcase much more than this weeks version of the game.  |
