18\/02\/26 Post valetines playtest –<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thankfully, a few days later, my classmates and tutors were able to give feedback on the project and help me figure out what was and was not working. At this stage, the game was still very early in development. The level was made up of three rooms arranged in an L-shape, and the starting camera was positioned so the player could not immediately see the second room. The idea behind this was to encourage players to discover the camera-switching mechanic naturally. At the time, the controls for switching cameras were mapped to the \u201cX\u201d and \u201cC\u201d keys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When people began testing the game, it quickly became clear that this mechanic was far less intuitive than I had originally thought. Adam suggested using an L-shaped corridor as a more natural way to introduce players to the mechanic. He also pointed out that most players would instinctively try the spacebar before any other key, which was something I had completely overlooked while designing the controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Esi was one of the few people who actually managed to discover the X and C inputs, although she admitted that this was partly because she had overheard me talking about the mechanic beforehand. She also mentioned that her experience playing games like Undertale and Deltarune made her more willing to experiment with unusual controls. Interestingly, she also liked the fisheye lens effect that I had originally planned on removing, which made me reconsider whether it actually added more personality to the game than I first realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other testers struggled much more. Xane was unable to figure out the controls at all, even after trying almost every button on the keyboard. He naturally assumed the mechanic would use the spacebar, and when that did not work, he thought the game had broken. Somehow, he also managed to break the colliders in the level during testing, which revealed a few technical problems I had not encountered myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jordan had a very similar experience and also could not find the correct inputs. He tried WASD, spacebar, mouse buttons, and the arrow keys before eventually giving up. Instead of using a traditional tutorial room, he suggested leaning more into the idea of a \u201cmoment of discovery,\u201d which had originally been part of my vision for the game. He recommended introducing the mechanic more naturally through level design, environmental clues, or even as part of a fetch quest so the player would discover it organically rather than feeling stuck or confused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This playtesting session was honestly a bit of a wake-up call for me. Up until that point, I had been so focused on creating an interesting and unique mechanic that I had not properly considered how confusing it might feel to a completely new player. In my head, the discovery aspect felt exciting \u2014 I imagined players eventually having that satisfying \u201caha!\u201d moment when they realised they could switch cameras \u2014 but in reality, most people just became frustrated because they had no idea what the game expected them to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It made me realise how easy it is as a developer to become too familiar with your own game. Because I already understood how everything worked, I assumed other players would naturally figure it out as well. Watching people struggle with something I thought was obvious really changed the way I approached design after that point. I started thinking much more carefully about how mechanics are introduced and how important subtle guidance can be, especially in puzzle games where players are already expected to think critically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, development itself was becoming stressful. Around five weeks had passed, and I had only just managed to import the animations into the project, with only one of them fully working in-game. Josh was also struggling with rigging the child character, which meant he had not yet been able to move onto modelling the house environment. Because so much of the project depended on different systems being completed alongside each other, these delays started to pile up and affect the overall pace of development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking back, this was probably the point where I started to realise our original plans were far too ambitious for the amount of time we realistically had. I ended up completely rethinking the timeline and focusing more on the core parts of the game rather than trying to do everything at once. Instead of constantly adding new ideas, I shifted my attention towards making the existing mechanics actually work properly and making the experience clearer for players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though this stage of the project was frustrating at times, it ended up teaching me some of the most valuable lessons of the entire development process. It showed me how important playtesting really is, how crucial communication and clarity are in game design, and how important it is to stay flexible when ideas are not working the way you originally imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
19\/02\/26 – Post exibit<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wasn\u2019t able to attend another expo with Indiana to showcase the game, so instead she arranged for her friends to playtest it. She created a quick build and sent it out to them, with the aim of seeing whether new players could understand the main objective: \u201cfind the ball and take it to the kid,\u201d which Indi had placed in a hidden room. Although they aren\u2019t game designers, they do play a lot of video games, so their feedback was still really useful for understanding how the game comes across to a general audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Niamh managed to figure out the controls fairly quickly, which was a positive sign. However, she did run into an issue where she knocked the ball out of frame and into a blind spot, making it difficult to continue. She also commented that the Westie character looked more like a Jack Russell, which gave some informal but useful feedback on the character design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ace struggled more with the control scheme at first and didn\u2019t immediately realise that the game required mouse input. They mentioned that it felt \u201ctricky\u201d switching between mouse and arrow key inputs, as it wasn\u2019t immediately intuitive. Once they were given a small hint about the arrow key functionality, they were able to pick it up quickly and completed the game shortly after, showing that the core mechanic was understandable once discovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coraline responded more positively to the mouse input, saying she liked it because it felt more unique than standard control schemes. However, she suggested that the design might work better if it returned to the original X and C camera-switching keys, but with a clearer tutorial to guide the player. Her feedback reinforced a recurring issue: the mechanic itself was not necessarily the problem, but the way it was communicated and introduced to players needed improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
18\/02\/26 Post valetines playtest – Thankfully, a few days later, my classmates and tutors were able to give feedback on the project and help me figure out what was and was not working. At this stage, the game was still very early in development. The level was made up of three rooms arranged in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-semester-2","category-year-3-25-26"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1201,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1200\/revisions\/1201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.wsagames.com\/jb19g23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}