Monday
On Monday, we zoned into Games User Research, an area of academia where Game designers study player psychology, predictable actions, and player data. To apply this directly, we looked at a game called Harvest 101. We are also focusing on testing our games in preparation for Week 5’s first official playtest and making the game accessible to as many audiences as possible.
Harvest 101
We were told to play this game by Vanissa and it is a card-based farming simulator game where your goal is to survive the week by collecting materials and using your card to farm and gain new cards/materials while managing the requests from villagers during random events.
Here are some of my thoughts on the game:
- The game UI is very tiny, so difficult to read.
- The game is a bit confusing to play, even when the tutorial was showing me what to do.
- Random events are a nice change of pace and force you to make interesting decisions.
- I found that I was randomly moving things and just seeing what results I would get.
- Therefore, the game isn’t really my thing and is not engaging to me.
- I ended up stacking loads of bread because I didn’t know what to do.
Playtest preparation
- My Goal: I need to finish the draft version of Eta’s 3D model so Sam can import it into Unity.
- What I want to do: I would like to test Sam’s prototype with the added assets that Carter has made and the changes that Sam has made to see how cohesive my model would be.
- How I will do this: I will use the Unity version to test each version Sam puts out by pulling the origin in Github, and give him feedback in time for next week.
- What is stopping you from making the game fun? I think the fact that there’s no goal is making the game a bit stagnant.
Thursday
Sophie recommended us a game to play: A_Desktop_Love_Story and a weird art of the week (a new series in class that she has with us) that focuses on art that is weird and intriguing, which we can also use as inspiration for our games. The weird art of the week is called: Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion by Francis Bacon.
Games Accessibility
- This is how playable the game is: modes, visuals, etc
- Limiting a game to a demographic of people is inaccessible. An example would be limited controls.
Resources we can use for accessibility information and guides:
- Game Accessibility Guidelines
- specialeffect.org.uk
- Makeymakey (making controllers out of anything)
Haptic feedback
- This refers to vibrations from the controller.
- This can be good if players need to know whether they are being rewarded by the game or a change has occurred.
- Some players need to turn it off (such as myself) as they are sensitive to the vibrations and may have sensory issues from it or weak hands.
For Kinetic Panic. . .
- We could add different controller input
- A tutorial so players know what to do
- The ability to pause the game at any time.
User testing
- Games cannot be played wrong, but they can be made wrong
- Someone other than you or your teammates should play the game, which allows for useful unbiased feedback
- Don’t speak, only write
How to write a Bug report!
- Summary line (What is the bug)
- Background details (what led up to the bug)
- Steps to reproduce
- Actual vs expected results
- Other relevant info
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Playtesting WSA Alumni Games and Prototypes!
We play-tested some random games from the WSA alumni and tried to break the game and identify bugs.
- The first game that my classmate Carter and I played was called GobMob Prototype. The only issue of note was just collision and that was only a little bit.
- The second game was called Sneaky Boi. The camera was messed up and the movement was very Janky and jittery. The goal of the game was unclear to us. There were no other notable bugs.
- The third and final game was called Sprout. We found the game-breaking bug almost instantly! To re-create it, pan the camera around very quickly. After you do this, the game camera suddenly lifts up and you can see all the backgrounds for the game and you cannot get back down.
We got our classmate, Guy, to try and re-create this bug without us telling him anything. He figured this out instantly as he moved the camera fast. Another bug of the game is that if you just play normally, the flowers are stretched and the left click to plant doesn’t work which is the main mechanic of the game.