Playtesting
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Playtesting is a very important part of the development step. It makes it possible to design flexible products by using the feedback gained during the development phase, in order to meet the players’ expectations. Playtesting can provide feedback for game on multiple levels; such as the game being mechanically balanced being fun or mechanics being compatible to theme. It is also good for having an outer perspective on the assets and can point to the problems that are unnoticed by the designer team. So far we have been through 2 playtests. During the playtest we haven’t given the players any more information than game control keys. We tried not to interfere with their actions and let them do the exploration. For every playtest, we have prepared a different questionnaire to collect player feedback on the game. We also observed and took notes on player reactions during testing. At the end of every test, we tried to interpret the results carefully and make the necessary changes in our game. I would like to talk more about the second playtest results, since it is the latest and reflects the current status of our game. Player overall experience towards the game was positive. People seemed to be interested in the game and having fun. They thought the colour choices were pleasing and contrasting colours make it easy to distinguish stuff easily. Most of them played the game minimum two times and shared the idea that experimenting part added to the game experience. The mechanics were understandable for the most of them in a short time. The players also agreed on that knowing mechanics of the game made a big difference in gameplay. None of them could beat the game in the first try. The negative feedbacks were mostly about our boss fight, with visual indicators not being enough before performing a very powerful attack, pick-up icons usage being unclear, and the function of aether bar not being understood. Currently we are working on fixing those problems, especially the boss attack. Many people have tested our game but very few has succeeded on killing the boss because they could not understand the exact timing of the attack, and how to dodge it. This led to sometimes uninterest or frustration.  It was nice to have both negative and positive feedback for the game in order to see where we are clearly and fix the problems with our game. It also showed us some problems we couldn’t notice ourselves (like people not understanding dash power can be used in all 4 directions) Spending too much time with a project makes it harder for the designing people to see problems sometimes.  |