Method

Joe had a new version of the game ready following last weeks meeting with the revised mechanics, Rosie was asked to create the bug report sheet on Excel and I had the questions ready for the survey.

We used Joe’s Macbook to playtest on, putting him in charge of setting up the game for each play tester. I worked on the Bug report sheet as well as a table to write notes, monitoring the play testers and writing down any comments or bugs. There was a QR code for the survey, which we asked each playtester to complete. Rosie timed each playtest and we made notes on how quickly they passed through the dialogue section, and how long it took them to either fail or succeed.

To test our set-up, we conducted playtests amongst ourselves as a teammates first. We started with a build on Itch.io, but faced game breaking scaling issues. We then moved to Unity, which worked much better.

Findings

The table below shows observational notes of each playtester and their experience of the gameplay. The prototype did not have a tutorial phase so players experienced the game blind, Sophie suggested that to save time we should write down the instructions on paper next to the computer.

Notable Findings

• Players died mostly to lack of Arms than to starvation
  • this means most players understood that they needed to keep their survivors alive with food but did not understand that they needed to also gather resources by the end of the week.
• Bug with checking food needs to be fixed
• Transparency of placeholder sprites – UI needs to be more clear
• Goal of the game is unclear to some players, even with instructions

Average time taken to finish playing: 4min 25s
This is what we were aiming for when discussing plans for this particular playtest so we’re pretty pleased.

Extra comments from playtesters and teammates:

• Playtesters attempt to drag placeholder slots instead of character sprites.
• When you fail, should you reset back at the camp or at the dialogue scene? Ans: The camp.
• The progression requirement should relate to the dialogue scene (Fallout-like terminal log telling you what to do).
• Ask adam about queen of the hill.
• Scraps should make tech and arms.
• Check people’s raspberri pi projects on youtube.

Feedback Form

Anonymous online form sent to playtesters to fill out after they were done playing.

Bug Report Sheet

Reflection

This first playtest session was honestly quite exhausting. By the 5th playtest we had a pretty solid idea of the glaring issue with the prototype and knew where we had to adjust next. We received some very valuable feedback, especially from the year 3s, that we will be strongly taking into consideration. Any big changes or next steps will be discussed at our next team meeting.

Ultimately, I’m happy with the feedback we received, it was a successful playtest and I believe it is going to steer us into the right direction as we develop the game further.