Week 10's challenge was all about running a QA test and playtest for my game. To do this I would need to test what I had completed of so far of my game and make a log of the bugs that I found.
I would then need prioritise what bugs would need to be fixed, so that they wouldn't interfere with the playtest. Once I was that that everything was ok for the playtest I would I would be able to distribute it on Itch.io alongside a player survey to gather feedback. This feedback will then be used to make adjustments and fixes to my game.
For the initial testing, I first played through it many times looking for bugs and glitches, I managed to find the following:
Tiling errors/inconstancies
Attacking swoosh not being heard
Background music from the menu screen overlapping
Some enemy collision boxes too small
The original tutorial puzzle not working within my own gameplay ideas
Too many light effects were ruining the overall aesthetic
Some tile collisions were missing or broke the game*
Due to working through a complete self-contained tutorial, there were not too many bugs as such overall - just where I had made mistakes copying the code or adjusting it and implementing my own.
* The main bug was where the player could jump through a collision tile and get stuck. This was due to my player character being a bit taller in pixels, so I adjusted the height of the levels to allow the player more space when jumping in narrower areas.
Once I had fixed these, found work arounds or just removed them, I managed to get a casual/informal (pre-playtest) playtest in with my students at work, where they would play it as much as they liked and give me their unfiltered feedback both verbally and through my observations of them playing.
This was very useful and a real eye opener, as although they were very complementary, I could see that I had completely misjudged the gameplay difficulty and general player ability.
None of the students were able to complete the demo and many couldn't get past the second level, this made me realise that I'd set the difficulty far too high and it wasn't as progressive as I thought it was through my own playthroughs.
Following this feedback, I went back and removed some enemies and made some of the platform elements more easily accessible.
I then added in some text box help in the guise of your pocket companion Peter the Field Mouse - Peter would give advice and introduce new foes and hazards for the player.
Unfortunately, I was only able to half implement this as I wanted to pause the gameplay as Peter spoke - but couldn't get this to work properly. In the end I compromised and tried my best space out Peter's interjections between each other and gameplay in the hope that they wouldn't interfere too much, but would still be useful.
Probably the biggest change I made following this feedback was to add in an additional enemy - a mini walking pumpkin that stays to a fixed path and adjust the movement patterns of the bouncing fire breathing pumpkin. The adjustments to the fire breathing pumpkin would make it easier for players to anticipate its movement and time their jumps and attacks more easily.
Alongside making these changes I worked on a survey for the main playtest, I used some questions from Shawn Patton's blog (Patton 2017) as a basis for my questions:
Did you find any bugs or things that didn't work correctly or how you though they would?
What was your favourite part of the demo?
Is there anything you would like to see added or changed? For example, different enemies, power ups or moves you would like to see added?
What did you think of the difficulty, was it too easy, just about right to allow progression or far too difficult?
What do you think of the in game graphics, were they detailed enough?
How did you find the colour palette, did all of the colours work well together?
Was everything clear, could you see everything clearly on screen or was there too much going on?
What changes would you make to the graphics if you could?
How did you find the soundtrack, did it feel like it fits within the game and did it add to the overall experience?
How did you find the sound effects, did they feel like they in with the gameplay and add to the overall experience?
What changes, would you like to see to the game's audio?
How did you find the gameplay, was there enough to do and see? Could you see yourself playing more levels?
I then used Google forms to create my survey and added a link to my game's itch.io page. Next, as per the challenge activity I added the game link to my Cohort's message board and also petitioned friends, family and some work colleagues to play it and fill in the survey. The survey's participation was anonymous and a selection of the answers can be seen below:
The general opinion was:
Some enemies would 'walk in the air'
Additional attacks or powerups would make things more interesting
The gameplay is still difficult for most, extra lives might help despite the difficulty most would play more
Some hazards weren't recognisable (ceiling spikes)
Everyone liked the graphics style and the colour palette worked well
The dialogue pop up could cause difficulties
some enemies could get lost under the different layers
The soundtrack was generally enjoyed and fitted within the game
Sound effects worked well, but could do with some adjusting as some were too loud
Some sight variation within the sound effects
Controls work well, could do with controller support and tutorial for the controls
Following on from this feedback, I mainly be looking work on the following:
The gameplay difficulty - enemy placement, additional platforms
Additional player attack - such as a limited ranged attack
Adding more (but smaller) tutorial box dialogue
Controller support
Audio tweaks
Removing some foreground clutter.
Fixing the floating enemies
Unfortunately, despite (or possibly because of) my persistence I only received 6 responses to my survey - which is understandable to a point, as everyone is very busy, but it was disappointing.
However, nevertheless the feedback I did get was invaluable and helped spot some new gameplay bugs and also give some useful suggestions to improve the gameplay for the final build.
References:
Lobb, I. (2021). TESTING INDIE GAMES
Extra Credits. (2018). So You Want To Be in QA - The Test Chamber - Extra Credits. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntpZt8eAvy0 [Accessed 19 Apr. 2021].
Jonas Troyller. (2019). How I Handle Playtesting. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/COxb3X-aBS0 [Accessed 19 Apr. 2021].
Razbuten. (2019). What Games Are Like For Someone Who Doesn’t Play Games. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw. [Accessed 19 Apr. 2021].
Patton, S. (2017). The Definitive Guide to Playtest Questions. [online] Schell Games. Available at: https://www.schellgames.com/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-playtest-questions/. [Accessed 19 Apr. 2021].
Comments