For April 26th, a room at NUA was booked for students to host their games for playtests, other students could come to test their games and provide feedback.
In preparation for the playtest, I added a few features for the playtesters:
-A widget with a picture of the controls appears when the player enters the game and disappears when the game starts. This way the players have a way to see all the controls and test them before starting the game, so they know how to play the game.
-Sound effects, I went onto freesound.org and got a few sound effects (Dash, spell cast, spell hit). I actually did this before I started preparing for sound effects but I forgot to talk about it in previous posts.
-I noticed that the game is considerably easy with how the player’s spells can go through entire crowds of enemies, so an effective playstyle is to just kite around enemies until they group up then do a burst of damage with spells. I tried making it so that the projectile is destroyed on the first collision which resulted in waves of enemies becoming substantially harder to clear. I wasn’t sure how to go about tweaking all numbers involved so I’ve undone the actor being destroy and left it in for the playtesters feedback.
I lastly set up a form to get feedback from the playtesters, I set up a couple questions to get an idea for how players feel for the game via rating as well as collect thoughts about certain features I wasn’t sure about.
(1).Most votes agreed the arena size was perfect but I liked the extra input about changing the arena as the level goes on, regarding the purple’s input “I’d ask that sort of questioning depending on if you were planning on keeping the space like this and open or adding things to play around” I had thought about added some destructible props that spawn in such as vases that provide health/mana.
(2). all players found the mechanics straightforward.
(3). I wanted to see if the player gets the right idea about what the goal of the game is by asking them an open-ended question rather than a static yes or no. There isn’t 1 goal in the game, it’s multiple as they’re fulfilling different objectives for the different gameplay loops. Short term is you have to survive, longer-term is you’re trying to reach new personal bests with scores and time survived(Depth).
I did however accidentally influence the bottom 3 responses as I told them the previous players the scores and you can see their responses change.
(4). I wanted to get a general idea of what players thought about the mechanics of the game, though I think this should have been an open-ended question rather than just a 1-5 rating as I didn’t really gather any input I can use.
(5). I made some rough sprites for the spells in selection and some materials but that’s the overall art input I had in the game. This was more of a silly question as “programmer-art” is notorious for being sub-standard, I did like seeing the range of responses however.
(6).The game was rated as very easy, which is what I was expecting with projectiles clearing large groups of enemies with ease.
(7). Feedback for what interactions players liked about the game, what works for my games “Unique Selling Point”/what stands out – although I also believe that if they’re all the same then it means other important elements in the game do not stand out enough on their own and need more work, such as enemies.
Regarding the 2nd’s response, I hadn’t set up the controls prompt correctly so I had to tell them the controls.
Players seemed to really like the different spells, I think it’s a good spot to touch up a lot in polish but I think it would be wise to change other elements like the enemies and see if the responses to this stay the same.
(8). I did not have the controls prompt set up correctly until after the 2nd player tested it. Feedback changed afterwards so the game is quite simple so far.
(9).A tutorial would be a really good idea, a little sandbox map to show the player each mechanic and how to play would work nicely.
All input for what to add next is right on the nail, difficulty scaling would be an easy addition, and I would love to add shops at the start for gold and xp.
Assets I want to add too, maybe some quick store textures would be a nice quick polish.
(10). I wanted to share the main ideas I had to improve the game, I see a lot of players already had these in mind but as I didn’t know they would ahead of time it was still worth including as I’ve still gotten feedback regarding these ideas.
Regarding cover the for the player, there isn’t meant to be any cover though I did notice the main cause of player death was either giving up as it was very easy or they suddenly were swarmed without a way out – I think this is much more of an issue caused by spawn protection. Even with my system I still think enemies too easily could spawn close to the player and with the spawning in groups this could occur easily. I think I ought to reduce the number of enemies spawning at a time.
(11). Overall rating for MVP, the playtesters are satisfied with the game for a game that’s meant to be minimal.
(12). I left a freespace for anything else players wanted to say, I my game idea is pretty solid and has great potential if I flesh out the existing flaws.
My favourite feedback for the whole form, E.
I wanna frame that E on my wall, beautiful.
Overall, the MVP has had great feedback from playtesting, both were both that the game is in a good spot for an MVP and has features that make it stand out that players enjoy and a lot of good areas that it can improve in.
First thing I want to do is balancing:
- Destroy projectile on enemy hit
- Reduce mana costs to compensate, round numbers up.
- Difficulty Scaling, start at 1 and increase every minute. Enemy health and damage is multiplied by this.
- Add a little more speed to the dashes.
- Prototype some different spell effects?
I am IMMEDIATELY doing this now (03/05/2023) 3 hours before the next playtest session.