After the playtest from last week, I had implemented numerous changes to my level design and the player mechanics to address problems that players identified. Some were minor tweaks and others were more significant changes to the level’s structure. Naturally, I was eager to conduct another play test and see whether these changes paid off.
6 detailed playtest responses were received. These responses consisted of observations I made while watching each player play through the level and answers to questions posed on an online survey that players completed after trying the game. The results were incredibly gratifying. The improvements to the grappling mechanic were immediately noticeable. During the last playtest, many deaths occurred due to the grapple being difficult to control. This time, however, there were significantly fewer grapple deaths save for a couple spots where the grapple points were placed slightly too far apart. People had fun with the grapple and that was fantastic to see! Additionally, the changes to the level layout made navigation easier for players. There were fewer places where death regularly occurred. Unfortunately, there were a couple awkward jumps still in the level which most of the play testers had some trouble with. I quickly corrected this after the playtest. This level was also the first time that people had played our game with the floppy disk and arcade token collectables in. Some players were determined to hunt down every last collectable, whereas others were content with getting the floppy disks that weren’t too far off their desired path. Regardless, everyone was interested in these collectables to some degree and this was amazing to see. I compiled the responses in a playtest report which summarised the actions we needed to take to refine our product. Most of these actions were carried out in the same week. The playtest report can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IRRqlrtSeWnJ87wIdoJjsrsnmjCR0BwP63HDbDW-P6w/edit?usp=sharing Playtesting has been an incredibly powerful tool for our game, especially in the last couple of weeks. It has shed light on issues in our game that we would never have noticed otherwise.
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September 2017
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