This week we further developed our game by designing more interesting puzzles and making a playable prototype. We started riging the protagonist and started 3D modeling the gameword. We found that when we are doing the riging, annoying bugs will always appear.
After finishing the prototype, we did a playtesting.
Design question intended to answer with this prototype
1. Are the mechanics making sense to the user (control keys)?
2. Are there too many keys to control the game that makes players hard to remember?
3. Since there are no NPCs in our game and there was no text clue, can players understand our puzzles?
4. How do they know how to solve each puzzle? What clues did they get, from where? Are the clues too obvious or too hard?
5. Are the puzzles too easy or too hard?
6. How much time does it take for they to solve one puzzle? (Since it’s a prototype, we can ask the players to speak out their thoughts, and test for the time that players come up with correct way of solving the puzzle.)
7. Since our game starts at the cave that is very dark, would players feel uncomfortable and don’t want to continue playing?
8. How does the environment feel? Does it feel as we expect? (It’s dark but users won’t feel depressed)
9. Is our map too big or too confused so players would be frustrated finding their way?
What type(s) of prototype (Mechanics, Aesthetics, Kinesthetic, and/or Technology) has (have) been built and why?
Since our questions are related to game control, game mechanics, solving puzzles, looking and feeling of character and environment, we built a prototype focusing on testing Mechanics and a little bit Aesthetics. We wanted the look and feeling of our prototype to approach the final game, so that it provides feeling that players are playing real games.
How are those intended questions are clarified with the current prototype (what works and what doesn’t)
1.We have applied mechanics to let players control the character by keys and by mouse
2.We provided clue about what they should do by an animation of the rise of the body and coffin at the beginning of this stage
3.We have already modeled characters and environment, and we also finished the render. So we can provide what will our game look like to the players and test for aesthetic aspect.
4. For time measurement, we can observe participants and time it with watches or iPhone.
Unexpected outcomes
When players need to move stones and step on them, some players forgot that they were intended to use mouse to interact with those stones so they walked to the back of the stone and press arrow keys, trying to push it to another position using character’s body. We found this interesting because before doing this prototype, we just revised our game design and decided to combine all the key controls towards interaction with objects to a simple mouse control, but in this prototype we find that maybe it’s better to combine mouse control with key control, but only involve the basic keys like arrow keys because arrow keys are controlling for walking directions now. We are thinking that to add a “pushing” function by standing beside the object and using arrow keys to push.
What further questions should be tested with next prototype?
Since this prototype we are testing for Mechanics and Aesthetic aspect, for next prototype we will mainly test for Kinesthetic and Technology.
Description of play testing process (images and/or video)
We have 3 sessions for new, intermediate and experienced gamer. Each session we have 2 participants, so we totally have 6 participants. Most of them are in age between 16 and 24, because our game is designed to be played in such age range.
We asked participants to sit in front of a computer and start testing. During testing, we would observe every decision the participant makes and take down notes where needed.
Notes, Feedback, and Analysis of prototype
We get answers from users by asking questions and observation. We found that the mechanics makes sense for the users because after explaining control keys to users, they can quickly adapt to them and use them fluently. There are not too many keys to control the game so players can easily remember them.
We found that players are a little bit confused of what they should do after he sees his body and the coffin. Some players don’t even know it’s his dead body and his cave, and they don’t know the character is already dead as well. But since we will have an animation showing that his soul is coming out from his dead body, this confusion should be solved.
But even if they don’t know what to do, they enjoy exploring the cave and interact with objects in the cave. The problem we found is that, since there are not many objects in the cave except rocks and mushroom, players would try to pick up those mushrooms at first. Once they tried to pick up and found that they can’t do that, they will continue going and click something else. Therefore we were thinking that to add more stuff in the cave so players have more stuff to interact with. We also thought about adding an interesting reward system in the game, for example, at the end of each stage saying that how many mushrooms players have picked up during the stage, and reward them something based on numbers of mushrooms they gained. We are not sure about this, and still thinking about it.
We found that, once players firstly collect a required object to solve a puzzle, even if they discovered it accidentally, it gives them a clue of what they should collect. Combining this clue and the clue at the beginning, players would know what to do.
We found that the difficulty of puzzle is normal - neither not too easy nor not too hard. Some of the collected items are easy to find but some are not, so players won’t be bored or frustrated. The average time to collect both requirement objects is 8 minutes, which is reasonable and as we expected. These 8 minutes includes confusion about what puzzles they need to solve, but once they get an idea, they can solve them easily. For further design, we want to make the clues of what puzzles they need to solve more obviously, while increase a little bit difficulties for several puzzles.
For the aesthetic aspect, players think that our 3D model and render of both the environment and character “pretty cool”. After asking some questions for feedback, players say that the cave is not too dark; they are comfortable and have willingness to continue playing the game. Some participants say that they are pretty interested and curious about what kind of forest there will be when they get out of the cave (since they know our game is called “The Forest”).
Players said that the size of our map is just proper for our puzzle, but since this is just a prototype and we will have more puzzles, we are thinking to extend our map.
Design refinement as per the internal review
-We find out that our puzzles are too easy for experienced game players, but just proper for new and normal players. Therefore we decided to keep the puzzles we already have, and further design for harder puzzles.
-Make the clues of what puzzles they need to solve more obviously, while increase a little bit difficulties for several puzzles.
-Add an interesting reward system in the game, for example, at the end of each stage saying that how many mushrooms players have picked up during the stage, and reward them something based on numbers of mushrooms they gained. We are not sure about this, and still thinking about it.
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