Playtesting

Week 5

This was a first playtest, which I was unfortunately unprepared for. We had planned to focus on displaying our character movement, as well as the artwork and music we had completed. Due to unforeseen personal circumstance, I fell behind and was not able to complete the artwork that I had planned to complete for this playtest. While we did not get much feedback as we were behind, I had a clear idea of what I had to do next as I had to catch up on my backgrounds and prioritise between what was most necessary for our game, being the basement and Rose’s room.

Week 9

This playtest was very successful. Based on feedback, people tended to like the TV UI that Suri designed, as well as the environment artwork and sound. From the criticism and from what I noticed during playtests, we realised that the interaction and acquisition of the key during the corridor scene was not clear enough for our players. Considering this, we decided that Adi would design a key item and I would design a small sparkle animation that one could see in the background to signify that the player should interact with it to pick it up. More information on how this would be implemented is here.

Week 11

During this playtest with the public, people mostly enjoyed our game, although we did have a few glitches, and a case where one of our players got soft-locked near the end of the game. I think that one of the most prominent issued pertained to players forgetting that they could use ‘W’ and ‘S’ during the basement scene in order to switch the perspective to the other side of the basement. I think this could have been helped by adding icons for the controls during the investigation where the player can refer if they forget, or perhaps a visual indication during the basement scene like an interactive arrow pointing left or right that begins glowing or moving once the player has completed everything that they can in that side of the room.

More on our playtesting sessions is detailed here on the blog I wrote for our group blog.