Dev Blog 5, Playtesting
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This week I will be writing about how playtesting of our game has affected our development. Coming in to the first session, our game wasn’t in a very playable state. Several mechanics were unclear and some of them weren’t completely implemented. This meant that testers had a hard time seeing what we were trying to accomplish with the design, and a lot of feedback was therefore useless. However, there were some useful takeaways for me. The first takeaway was that we needed to focus more on the MVP (minimum viable product). The game that what we brought to be tested wasn’t very playable, which clearly showed the lack of working towards an MVP. By not having a version ready to be tested we missed out on valuable information about the strengths and weaknesses of our design.
After this first testing session, I changed my focus to complete the most important aspects of the game first, instead of getting the details of a certain feature right. By working to have the central mechanics of the game implemented, perhaps in quite basic states, would mean that others, as well as our own group, better understood what our game was about. The testing also made it more apparent that some mechanics needed to be a lot clearer. However, it is hard to say whether those issues had more to do with a fundamentally poor design to begin with, or that those designs weren’t fully implemented. The fact that other mechanics and visuals that would support the mechanic that wasn’t working out were missing also made this harder to determine. It is possible that once those unclear mechanics were put into the context of the rest of the game, and they became more polished, that they would also be more intuitive to the player. The test sessions also gave a good insight into how the games of other groups were coming along. This is especially true for us, since so many groups are using the same design document. I don’t think it’s a good idea to compare your own work to others in terms of being better or worse. However, seeing what others have done in the same time shows what can be done, and motivates me to do as well as I can.  |
