A few days before the playtest, I quickly ported, textured, and gave physics to the assets I’d made, so our testers wouldn’t be jumping around some vague meshes. There were some initial normal issues, but those were quickly smoothed out.
Come the playtest itself, the main flaw that pertained to me was that people kept getting lost. Parker and Hugo seemed keen on the segmented living room idea, but again, I wasn’t so sure. It didn’t really solve the issue we had of less open space, and with the living room segmented into so many pieces by the furniture, it felt too big. The game should have an emphasis on exploration, but it shouldn’t confuse players – especially as it was a tutorial level. And with how everything was arranged, I didn’t feel as though there were many places to keep adding furniture to hide behind.
Therefore a redesign was in order. I decided to fully redo the living room, and looked into level design principles from similar games to help me come up with some solutions.
To see everyone’s contribution to the game this week, see below.
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