The impact of Playtesting

Hello everyone. Today I am writing about playtesting more specifically how playtesting has affected our development. We had two playtests one for the alpha and one for the beta. Playtesting is important because we get outside eyes to help us to see problems, bugs or game breaking tactics in the game. As the tester played our game, some members took notes of everything they noticed, i.e., how the player moves, or how they react to different encounters. After they have played the game, the team member asked some question about their experience. We choose to have everything verbally because we thought we could get more out of our tester as the person monitoring the examiner could ask a question if they found an answer especially exciting or vague. 

The picture depicts some of our notes we took during the playtesting

 

In my opinion, is playtesting an excellent way to see if your project is going in the right direction, or if there is something that needs to be clarified or changed. It is easy to get blinded by your creation, and by including an extra pair of eyes who is not biased can save a lousy product.

We got much information about our game from the playtesters. A lot of what the tester said has changed in the game, for example, the way the player moves as many players did not think it felt enough like a bee. Our power-up got much confusion, so it confirmed to us that it needed to change for the future, we had already thought about changing it. So the playtesting gave us a new view of our game and helped it get to a new height.

All in all: The playtesting has been an invaluable thing that has helped us in more than one way. It has helped us get the feeling of our movement right, confirmed that our power-up system needs to change and clarify some of our art assets as some were hard to notice (getting covered by bushes) or getting confused (our honeycombs looking and sounding like coins). Another essential thing it has taught me is the importance of player feedback, as that was the basis of most of our misunderstandings.