During the final stages of the development stage of my Beta Build I participated in a lengthy playtest session, this session allowed me to present my outcome in its current form to an array of different testers to gather helpful and relevant feedback that I could then analyse and apply to the appropriate areas of my game to improve the overall experience. For this playtest session I created a Google Form that included  various open questions covering all aspects of my game, this allowed me to gather detailed feedback in the relevant sections of my game. In addition to this, I had the opportunity to playtest several of my classmates' outcomes to help aid them in the improvement of their games or artwork. In this document I will be analysing the feedback given to me and will be applying the feedback that I deem necessary to the next iteration of my outcome.

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Question 1 - What did you enjoy about the game when playing it?

 

I opened the survey form with a context page that detailed the overall story of my game so the testers had a more in-detailed look at the story before they went on to play the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first question that I opened up with was ‘What did you enjoy about the game when playing it?’The feedback and responses from this question was overwhelmingly positive and it taught me a lot about the positive areas of the testers' gameplay experience and also how they viewed my game. A lot of the feedback / responses on this question focused mainly on the theming and also the puzzle elements to the game, most stating that they ‘enjoyed the puzzle aspect’ and saying that they ‘think that it fits the theme you are going for really well’. Overall this question has shown me that people actually enjoy the theming and puzzle mechanics that I developed in the game world and I am extremely happy with this, especially in terms of puzzles and theming, because the whole goal to the game is to complete puzzles and challenges to escape from Loki’s grasp and flee to safety, so if the testers did not enjoy the puzzle aspects then I would have completely missed the entire point to the game.

 

In addition to this, I found that the feedback showed me that one of the testers were extremely immersed in the theme of the game and also the main characters experiences by saying, ‘I enjoyed the feeling of being able to roam, just to then gain the sense that you are truly trapped within a section of the map’, this can be viewed in both a positive and negative light, however I have interpreted this as being a strong positive point because this is the feeling that I wanted to convey within the game, to truly immerse the player in Barry’s struggles throughout the puzzles. I do not believe that this question showed any negative points or improvements that I can add to the game and ultimately this feedback has shown me that I do not need to amend the core gameplay especially the puzzles, movement, inventory systems or overall artstyle. Based on this feedback I will not be amending any of the points mentioned because I do not want to touch or change any of the features that the play testers have deemed enjoyable.

 

Question 2 - What did you dislike about the game?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Moving onto the second question of the Google Form, this question went straight to the point and asked what points of the game the play testers disliked, I wanted to get straight to the point with this question and decided to opt for a more open and wider question for the first dislike / improvement section of the Google Form. This question gathered a large array of responses and overall was a mixed picture, this is probably down to players experiences with RPG, Puzzle, Horror games such as this. The feedback from this question has taught me various things and that is people found that the keycode puzzle at the start of the game to be too hard to find and also found it difficult to enter the code into the keypad system. Also it has shown me that people did not understand how to use the combat system and also where to use the interactive items throughout the puzzles.

 

The first piece of feedback that I want to analyse in detail is the first response, ‘I struggled somewhat with the movement for the game, where I can't move diagonally. I'm not entirely sure how it can be fixed, but maybe using 8-direction movement may be advisable? Also, I struggled finding the correct door to use the key on. Perhaps adding some shimmer to the correct door when you click the key may be the right way to go. I'd suggest trying particles.’, this feedback gives me mixed signals when it comes to improvements because although they have mentioned that they did not find the movement to be intuitive and struggled to move diagonally, they mentioned that 8-bit movement would be more suitable for my game. However, I have been using 8-bit directional movement throughout all of my builds, so I will not be amending my movement firstly because no one else mentioned an issue and also I have been using this movement style throughout all of my builds.   
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going back to this response, they mentioned that they had a difficulty to understand where the key object needed to be used, I have included hints in my game and if they had them toggled on then they would have been greeted with a nice hint message when they interacted with the door saying ‘To unlock door click ‘key Object’ in inventory’, now they may have been playing without these hints on however I feel that it is extremely clear what door requires the key because the second door has a keypad attached to it and also the key can only be clicked when the player is within the radius of the door that requires the key. Going from the points in this response I will not be making any major changes to the game, however I will make the hints more prominent and visible so they are easier to see when playing with them on. I can achieve this by adding a contrasting background to the text so it stands out amongst the rest of the UI system, so the only change from this response will be improving the visibility of the hints bar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another key area that the survey has taught me is that the testers were unable to understand how to use the keycode system, this may also be based on the hints text that I mentioned earlier, this is because the player enters the keycode into the white text box instead of using the numbers featured on the keypad asset, I chose to opt for keyboard entered text because all other puzzle elements are interacted with using the keyboard so I was not going to switch this up as I believed that this would confuse the user. As I said earlier with the key object, a hint message appears when interacting with this keypad element and I can only assume that the testers either did not have hints on or they completely ignored the message. After analysing this, I will take a look into this keypad element and will also ensure that I change the hint messages so that they are more visible to the user. I will not be changing the interactivity of this keypad because of the mixed responses as some players found no issue with this element at all, just like ‘There was nothing I really disliked to be honest’. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also in the responses of this question I found that people found the combat system to be either hard to understand or not working at all, the responses are unclear on this, I have conducted several tests and even delegated several hours of my time working on the combat system and I found no issues with the reliability of it. In addition, if the testers did not know how to use the system then this tells me that they did not refer to the ‘How to play menu’ which states all of the control layouts for the game and also the backstory.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This menu clearly states ‘To use attack press the X key’, going from this I will look into the issue, however I will not be making any drastic changes to the combat systems because I believe that they work and also the controls are clearly stated.

Overall, from the responses from this question I will not be making any large changes to the gameplay experience and will only be looking into improving the visibility of the hints UI and also the visibility of the interactive items throughout the puzzle. I am extremely happy with one of the responses that I gathered and this was ‘There was nothing I really disliked to be honest. It's a fun concept and it has the ability to be played repeatedly until the level is beat.’. I was happy with this response because they appreciate the effort that has been put into this game and also they state how they enjoy the fun concept and also the replayability that comes with the game.

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Question 3 - Did you feel that the story was clear and present in the game?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The third question within the Form was a short answer question that I put into the survey just so I could understand whether or not a player would be able to pick up upon the main storyline of my game and overall most of the responses were extremely positive except for two anomalies. Six out of the Eight respondents said that the story was clear and that they were either able to pick it up through the dialogue or the backstory that I provided on the main menu screen, this is positive news for me and it has taught me that 75% of my playtester found the story to be clear and that I have been able to portray the story well which is something that I felt the game was lacking, however I guess I was wrong.

 

The two respondents or 25% found that they ‘got a somewhat idea of the storyline, but if it wasn't written out in the description I wouldn't of known’ and the other response just said ‘sorta’, so removing the vague response from this, I only had one person how found the story somewhat present. This really stood out to me amongst the other feedback and I believe that I will not be making any changes based on story or story presentation because the rest of the respondents found the story clear and present so I will not be changing my story presentation based upon one negative feedback piece.

 

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Question 4 - Did you feel that the goal of the game was clear and present?

 

 

 

 

 

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This fourth question focuses on a single area of the game and touches on the user experience. This question and responses from it will allow me to make amendments to the goal presentation or level layouts for the puzzles to make the goals more clearer. The responses from this question were yet again heavily weighted on the side of positive except for one negative response, this feedback has taught me that 87.5% of playtesters found the goal to be clear and present I am happy with this feedback because I wanted the experience on the players first playthrough to show and present the main goal which is to complete the puzzles, escape Loki and return back to safety. I believe that the main goal is extremely easy to understand and it is presented through various forms, this includes hints and dialogue. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Most of the responses mentioned the use of hints and dialogue to portray the goal, ‘Thanks to the explanation through the use of narrative, I found that the goal was laid out clearly in front of me.’, ‘the goal of the game is perfectly done. If they want a challenge, you can go without hints. If you want to play and enjoy the game, you can play with the hints.’, this shows me that the dialogue and hints work perfectly together when it comes to the presentation of the goal and most of the responses said that the goal was ‘pretty clear! It provided me with enough information to understand what I needed to do’. 

 

Going back to one of the responses ‘If they want a challenge, you can go without hints. If you want to play and enjoy the game, you can play with the hints.’, this person completely understands what I was going for in terms of difficulty that can be changed by the user and says that hints can be toggled on or off based on the challenge to the puzzles, however the one response that I have deemed to be negative said, ‘if you have the hints on, yes, if not, then no’. This response completely missed the point of the hints system and I completely disagree to the response because the goal of the game is very clear in the dialogue and also the backstory provided, in addition, it is down to the user whether they play with hints on or not so I will not be changing how I present the goal to the game. Overall, I believe that the feedback from this question was helpful for me to understand if the goal was clear and I have been able to see that the goal has been viewed as clear, so no changes will be made to my outcome based on this feedback collected.

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Question 5 - Were the controls intuitive and responsive?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The responses from this question were mixed again and overall it has taught me that the movement controls and keyboards control were very reliable and worked perfectly because most of the responses mentioned this point ‘The main keyboard controls responded perfectly’. The main problem in terms of controls seemed to come from the mouse and interacting with the interactive items in the inventory, ‘I found myself having to click something multiple times in my inventory to select it’, this has opened my eyes to a bug that has occurred when iterating with inventory items and I will have to look into this issue further and also make the items larger and also increase the size of the hitboxes for the items so the mouse / cursor has a larger area to click. Overall, from the vast range of feedback I will look at increasing the hitboxes of the items so they are easier to interact with.

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One response that stood out to me was, ‘yes, apart from the attack which was X, it was in a weird place’, this stood out to me because this person was the only person to mention this point and I somewhat agree with them, because for most people their thumb automatically rests of the spacebar and not the X key so I believe that I should change the attack key to the Spacebar because it is a larger and more prominent key. So when it comes to improvements based on this response I will be changing the attack key to the Spacebar because I agree with the response and I feel that the spacebar is a more intuitive choice over the X key.

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Another response that stood out was, ‘yes but it would help with a controls page’, this response has taught me that this responder did not view the ‘How to play menu’ and therefore did not see the control layout, this may be the same person that had a problem earlier with understanding what key was used for attack. I completely disagree with this feedback because I have included a controls page that clearly details the control layout and so I will not be making any changes based upon this response as I believe it to be irrelevant.

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Question 6 - Was the gameplay intuitive?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This question was another short answer question and all of the responses from this I have viewed as extremely positive. This question and its responses has taught me that all of the playtesters found the gameplay to ‘run well’ and also found that the game was ‘laid out thoroughly with a clear plan’, there is not a lot to take away from these responses except that I do not need to change, amend or improve the overall gameplay because all of the playtesters found that the game was intuitive and also the gameplay got the player thinking about what they had to do. Overall, I will not be improving anything based on the feedback provided because all 100% of testers liked the gameplay experience.

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Question 7 - Did you feel that the game was balanced? / Was the difficulty balanced?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The responses that I gathered from this question were very mixed, however, it has taught me that the majority of testers found that the gameplay and difficulty was balanced. When going through the responses, most of the testers said ‘the game felt balanced’ but I did encounter a few responses that stated things like ‘tight movement’ and also combat and health bugs. Focusing on the ‘tight movement’ response the tester said that the tight movement affected the difficulty of the game and said it was a ‘little tough’, now this person is probably the same tester that mentioned the 8-bit directional movement and I have stated that I have been using this type of movement that they suggested all the way through the development, going from this I feel that this feedback is irrelevant and not helpful because as I have said the movement works extremely well and no one else has had any problem with movement so I will not be changing the movement style to help with the balance of the game.

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Looking at the other response, ‘no, I got 2 hearts gone from 1 attack’, this feedback has taught me that there may be a bug within the game that is affecting the health system and I will need to test this out to be able to resolve this issue. This response will help me to improve said combat and health system and overall, I will look into the issue ensuring that it does not arise again. Overall, the only improvement that I will be making is to fix the issue that affects the health system from not deducting the correct heart points from the player. 

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Question 8 - What did you like about the pixel art?
Do you feel that the pixel art needs improving? (Scaling, Proportions, Shading, Depth, Colour Scheme, ETC.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This question, What did you like about the pixel art? I included to get an idea as to what needed to be improved in terms of my asset designs and also artwork because I feel that my skills are lacking in the art department so I wanted to gather as much feedback as possible. After my extended research and experimentation I felt that my skills improved more but I still wanted to gather feedback on the art included as of this version. Overall, the responses from this question has shown me that the testers did not find any major issues or improvements with my pixel art, some even said, ‘I feel, personally, the pixel art could remain as it is.’. This is excellent positive feedback and I feel even more confident in myself and my art, however some people said that ‘scaling’ needed to be improved but I feel that this contradicts the other responses that I gathered, ‘It was all the right scaling and proportion with no randomly massive tables anywhere’.

 

Going from this feedback and after analysing all of the responses, I have come to the conclusion that I will not be changing any of the art scaling and instead will be focusing on adding all of my art to the rest of the assets to complete the Beta stage, I have chosen this route because only two people mentioned scaling and I also believe that there are no scaling problems with my pixel art.

 

Question 9 - What Bugs did you encounter? (Mechanics, Controls, Gameplay, ETC.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The second to last question was ultimately one of the most important questions that I asked the playtesters and that was whether they encountered any bugs during their playthrough. I received a bag of mixed feedback and most of the points raised in the responses have already been mentioned to me in earlier responses, for example, I have the same feedback for, ‘A few control issues such as inventory access’, ‘it would take some time for me to select an objects from my inventory and with bullets from the gun there would turn when you fire and turn’. The most prominent feedback that was raised to me was the inventory system and how it would not allow the tester to click on objects, this as mentioned before has shown me that I may have an issue with my hitboxes and so I will be making my hitboxes larger so they are easier to click. 

One piece of feedback that stood out to me was, ‘bullets from the gun there would turn when you fire and turn’, this feedback was not mentioned by this tester in any other question before this and so I will have to look into the problem that they encountered in the game and try to replicate the bug that they found to find a fix for it.

 

As I mentioned before I spent a lot of time working on my combat system and I made sure that issues like this would not happen, and after reviewing the bullet code I have found that this bug would be impossible to occur because I have set the bullet movement angle only once and it a fixed variable so once it is chosen it does not change, so this bug could not have occurred, the player must have moved just before the variable set the angle of movement, that is a split second movement between firing and moving. 

 

 

 

 

 

Going from this feedback, I will make the appropriate changes to hitbox sizes for interactive objects, the inventory system and weapon UI to ensure that the bugs encountered and brought to my attention here do not occur again. Going back to the bullet bug I will not be making any changes to the behaviour of my bullets because after testing with the gun and bullet feature I was unable to replicate this bug and so I will not be amending my code because the bug was just a fluke occurrence that should not have happened because the code and behaviours are in place to prevent such occurrence from happening.

 

Question 10 - Overall, what do you feel needs improving?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This closing question was included to just give me a quick summary of what the testers feel needs to be improved and this will allow me to see the key areas that need improvement. Analysing this feedback, I have been able to see that most of the feedback here has been mentioned over the course of the form and this is what this question is about, to give a summary of the improvements needed. I have once again been greeted by the feedback, ‘I feel like the movement is most necessary for improvement’, as I have mentioned before I will not be making amendments to my movements because I am already using an 8-bit movement system so no changes need to be made there.

 

In terms of the rest of the feedback, these covered various improvements such as, ‘Adding more models’, ‘Fixing bugs’ and showing ‘what places you need to go after you complete one level’. I completely agree with the rest of the feedback because I also feel that the world needs more models and also bugs need fixing to improve the overall experience. I will be adding various models and environmental objects to my game to help it bring it alive and I will also spend some time fixing the bugs that I deemed necessary improvements for my last question. I also partially agree with the feedback, ‘what places you need to go after you complete one level’, because I have included dialogue that tells the player where to go, however I do not currently have dialogue after completing the first level so I will have to add similar dialogue to the end of level 1 when the player enters the city again to give the player guidance as to where to head to next.

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Overall, the responses highlighted some clear areas of improvement and I will be making all of the necessary changes to my game to ensure that this feedback is met.

In conclusion, this feedback session has opened my eyes to some improvements and amendments that need to be made in order for my outcome to be of the best quality. I will be making amendments to the hints included in my game, adding more environmental models, finishing my artwork, changing the attack key to Spacebar and also adding in more dialogue for when the player finishes level 1. I will also be making any other improvements that I have mentioned throughout the feedback review above that I might have missed in this closing paragraph.

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Following my playtest session, I have made the appropriate improvements to my game and my updated post-playtest version as well as my playtest version can be viewed below to showcase my improvements.