Play testing 1

What

This Monday my group and I had the chance to present our game during the play testing, which gave us the opportunity to receive very valuable feedback on our game. The version of the game that we presented was a kind of pre-alpha edition, we still had to change all the placeholders within the game and add the sounds, as well as tweaking some things that we knew were necessary for the game to be fun (e.g. enemy projectiles).

How

During the play testing each group had its own spot assigned within the classroom, with at least two laptops running the game, and usually another screen for a survey. After that, students started roaming individually throughout the classroom in order to play as many games as possible.

The day before the play testing, my group and I reviewed the Unity collab project and made sure that what we had was working properly, in order to avoid issues coming up while people tried to play it in class. In addition, I took care of the survey preparation and then asked my group to review the questions and edit/add some things if needed.

Why

It was very important for us to understand how the other students play testing the game felt about it, and tried our best to get valuable feedback. Having a play testing day gave us a chance to put all the cards we had on the table and get feedback on what needed to be changed/fixed.

Overall, I would say that we received a lot of useful advice from the students that either spoke with us while playing our game or that filled the survey we had ready. In some cases, the criticism we received came out as a bit of an eye opener, for example regarding the game feedback: it was definitely lacking, as we wrongly prioritized other things that in the end were not as important. Although, in other cases, we received a very positive feedback, especially regarding the feeling of falling of the game and how the aesthetics were playing out.

Results

After the play testing session was over, my group and I sat down in the cafeteria and went through the survey results and had a long meeting to see what needed to be fixed and how, as well as going through some design choices as well (e.g how to rework the melee attack and make the player want to use it, or how to rework the shooting cone of the bubble weapon).

befunky-collage

Some of the results from the survey, the upper chart tells us to really pay attention to how the character moves around.

 

The meeting took longer than expected (since it was a Monday we also took care of both Sprint Review and Sprint Planning) but in the end we managed to get a more cohesive vision of the game.

The following pictures show everything we were able to implement for the Alpha presentation after receiving feedback from the other students:

screenshot-17

Play testing version: old character animation, old enemies, different crosshair, different enemy projectiles

screenshot-21

New version after the play testing: new enemies, new enemy projectiles, new crosshair, character animation improved and generally better balanced

 

 

 

 

About Chiara Lorusso

2016 Project Management