Playtesting & Critiques

Test procedure

We did 2 playtesting sessions. The first with 3 computer science students. The second one with 10 extern people between 20 - 30 year old . As our game is quiet complicated, we offered some easy singleplayer-puzzle levels, where the tester could get familiar with the games possibilities. During this, we explained each tester the basic functionalties of the game and its controls. This compensated the lack of a manual booklet oder a tutorial level.

When each tester felt comfortable with the controls, we started the multiplayer-match. One match with 2 against 2, one with 3 against 3. During this multiplayer-match of 20 minutes, we did not help the tester.

In the end, we distributed a questionnaire, and left the testers some time to fill it out.

The whole testing took about 2 hours per session.

Questionnaire

These were the questions we asked in the questionnaire and the summarized answers:

• How did the controls feel, did they make sense?
  The controls are too sensitive, unintuitive, not good coupled to the camera.Using a trigger to change left analog stick between player move and cursor move, and put camera controls to right analog stick.

• How did the camera feel? Would you change it?
  Not intuitive, jumpy, cursor camera not zoomable. Camera should be steerable. Did not provide enough overview.

• Did anything feel clunky or awkward?
  The controls and the camera. It is hard keep moving in the same direction while the camera moves. Tutorial missing. Building bridges is too difficult.

• What was your first impression?
  Special and advanced gameplay, beautiful graphics and lot of details. Advantages (features) of the energies not intuitive. Controls difficult.

• How did that impression change as you played?
  The game offers a lot of possibilities and tactics. Advantages (features) of the energies got more intuitive.

• Was there anything frustrating?
  No orientation, didnt know where the ball, goal and other players are. Building a bridge too complicated. Being caugth in a hole.

• Did the game drag at any point?
  Didnt found way out of same difficult situations and locations.

• What was missing from the game?
  targeted shot on a specific enemy. Minimap. Humor. More vegetation and details. A clear gameplay concept. A story.

• If you could just change one thing, what would it be?
  Add a Tutorial. The camera. 1st person view. Physics. The ogres outift. Controls.

Results

From the reactions during testing and the questionnaire, we came to the following conclusions:

• The two most annoying things of the game are the camera and the controls.
• We should offer a ingame possibility to learn the controls and basic functionalities.
• A overview minimap was request from a lot of the testers.
• The gameplay works like we imagined it.
• The graphics are convincing.

Concequences

We allready changed the camera behaviours and the controls.
We plan to add a minimap.
We plan to add a tutorial and a controls overview screen.

-- MarioDeuss - 12 May 2008