Is it boaty enough?
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Testing is the backbone of any iterative project. Without testing, the product won’t improve. That’s why, in our project, there has been two major testing occasions where other students are supposed to test our game; one for the alpha and one for the beta release. In addition to the main test events, we are continuously testing within the group. I’ve also had the opportunity to let friends outside of campus test the game. The player’s perspective The more testers, the more accurate the feedback. With a high amount of testers, you’re going to notice that the statistics shifts towards specific results, which makes it easier to identify the problems The alpha and beta tests at campus clearly showed that some aspects of the game weren’t as clearly communicated to the players as we thought they were; some of which we wouldn’t have been able to find with only internal testing. They key lesson here is that you should test the game on people who are unfamiliar with the game, in order to see it from an outsider’s perspective. How boaty was the movement?The ones who have tested our game might remember this question from the questionaire. According to the test results, it is safe to say that the movement is indeed quite boaty. I spent a lot of time working on that, so I’m happy with the results. While the boat acts really slow and sluggish, as it should, some testers wanted more responsive input. We also included questions about the aesthetics; asking if the game felt mysterious enough. The audio and visual style together with the pace of the game is what decides the mood of the game. Staying true to the concept document, we wanted it to be on the slower side, but still challenging. Some regretsLooking back, I wish we would’ve focused on adding a bit more content before the test sessions. We are missing feedback for our tutorial and boss for example, neither of which were implemented at the time. I also wish that we would have done more prototyping during development. Early paper prototyping on feature concepts would have been valuable, minimizing the risk of unnecessary work on features that would be cut because they didn’t fit the aesthetics.  |