First Playtesting
This week the 11 levels that have been developed were put together. A brief playtest was conducted. And got some pretty useful feedback!
Tester feedback:
- The microphone level doesn’t seem to work.
In fact it does work as long as the computer has a microphone function. But the player did not receive a clear message that it was working properly. I will add a real-time volume alert to tell the player that it is working properly. And give further voiceover prompts when the player doesn’t realise what they should be saying.
- The default theme looks awful
It does suck because I thought I wouldn’t have time to deal with the aesthetic effects. So I had decided to focus all my efforts on the game mechanics. But the art style is also part of the gameplay, so I’m going to abandon some of the levels. Instead, I will finish the artwork for the levels that have already been completed.
- The game is likely to rudely take the player out of the game when they inadvertently hit the QUIT button.
My original intent: this game is played from the start screen, so hitting quit should exit the game. However, when more levels are added, this can greatly disrupt the player’s experience. Now that I have a more subtle way of punishing the player for closing the game in later levels, I need to remove the excessive punishments in the previous levels. This would be done by adding a judgement box to cancel the exit.
Modify Game Themes
This time I added themes to the games so that each game looks different and the themes are more in line with their gameplay and storylines. I used the game themes as a hint to the player’s play style, so that at first glance the player can get a sense of how the level will be played.
Second Playtesting
As I continued to develop, I followed up with another round of playtesting.
Testers’ feedback.
- Players had difficulty returning to a previously played level after passively closing the game because there was no indication of the current level being played
- When the player returns to the game, they want to be able to locate the previous level. (Archive function)
As the number of levels increases, it can be difficult to remember which level you are in, and even when I was programming, I had to constantly check my excel sheet to see which scene corresponded to which game. This is why the archive function is necessary. I decided to tweak the logic when running the game so that the player can only play a later level if they have unlocked the previous one. And in the event that they are accidentally kicked out of the game, they can also quickly go back to the previous level. This is to ensure that the player can quickly locate their level.
Thanks for the great feedback from Jacky!
Development of the remaining levels
Due to a change in strategy, I have focused on optimising the current levels. Instead of continuing to develop those levels that are not yet complete. I won’t have time to implement them and work out the bugs. The levels in black are the ones I gave up developing for submission.