Assignment 3: Playtesting

 

looks like there having fun but we need paperwork to be sure.

In the last post about Assignment 3 I talked about the changes I would make to the game before going into playtesting. Of those changes we decided to implement the split Intensity Meters. If you don't know what I'm talking about go read my post "Assignment 3: Development Progress". 

Now on to the topic at hand.

We have begun the process of play testing.

We know the game is buggy going in and obviously there are things we would like to fix before going to play testers, but we don't have the time for that so let's put out of scope out of mind. 

First lesson is feedback comes fast in a playtest for a two-player game. The players speak to each other and because the game is player V player when someone gets the upper hand there can be a lot of yelling about it on both sides.  

Looking at the feedback over the four playtests that we have conducted there are some clear patterns when it comes to gameplay issues. 

lets revisit the successes and failures lists from my postmortem posts.

Successes

- Its overall pretty fun to play, game is not bad at least 

- People love the movement, jumping, bouncing off blocking enemies. They love it and want more. 

- The parrying mechanic of weapons bouncing off each other when you both players attack at the same time is fun and the clashes that occur actually feel pretty good and kind of cinematic.

- The Intensity Meter is a fun mechanic that people like to investigate and work around. Players have stopped fighting each other to work together to experiment with it before going back to fighting. 

Failures 

 - The block, Oh my the block. No one likes it, feels bad to use, is bad to use. "Why would I block when I could just attack which works as a parry and is an attack" the block needs an entire rework from the conceptual level. Many players didn't even realise they were blocking and thought it was a bug.

- While players loved the jumping and movement, they didn't like the air attack

- People want more attacks, attacks that aim up so you can attack jumping enemies, heavy attacks, attacks that aim down so when your jumping over someone you can make an attack. More attacks.

- The Intensity Meter is impossible to figure out, People are so confused by it and even after having it explained they need to play with it to figure it out. Also, they often assume that its a health bar or that if the Intensity Meter runs out they will die. 

Whether we get the time to make change based off this information is up in the air but we know what should be done from here and we can see a really good game in the distance. We'll see how it goes next week as we are coming very close to the end of the semester and this unit.