Testing feedback and review

For the testing of Daring Diamond Defence, we created a questionnaire for the player to fill out after playing our prototype. Our questionnaire consisted of 4 major sections, Gameplay, Art & Graphics, Functionality & Bugs, and Suggestions. We had a total of 18 responses from the survey.

1. Gameplay

About the six grading questions of Gameplay, generally speaking, our gameplay should be at medium level,

For the gameplay test this time, according to the questions of the players during the game test and the evaluation of gameplay from the players in the questionnaire, the most eye-catching issues are the difficulty and the pace of game.

Difficulty :

Game difficulty is a difficult but unavoidable game development problem to measure correctly.

In this test, the player is generally believed that the game difficulty is simple, but we want to keep the difficulty of the game on a biased towards the difficult point level, but at the same time we want to keep the game enemy now has qualities, such as red enemies will be stronger than other enemies, and the blue of the enemy's movement speed will speed up more than other enemies.

So the difficulty adjustment will probably be achieved by adjusting the value.  For example blue enemies move faster and red enemies get stronger (increased HP).

Pace of game:

The overall pace of the game is another aspect we need to adjust. In fact, for a defensive game, the pace of the game is very important. According to our previous plan, the overall pace of the game should be fast, and there should be a stage from slow to fast.

Just like the classic game, Plants vs. Zombies, has a slow pace at first, but gets faster over time.

So the pacing of the game is probably based on plants vs. zombies. At the beginning of the game, enemies will appear slowly and rarely, then as time goes by, the frequency and number of enemies will increase, and a large number of special enemies will appear.

2. Art & Graphics

Most of the ratings above lie around 4.0, which is still a good feedback for now. It shows that the game's current art content is in line with most people's imagination.

Here is the detailed feedback given by players:

Most of the problems arise with the diamond and enemy models. The diamond looks like a white solid with an eerie blue glow because we failed to create a transparent material upfront. Giving the diamonds the right texture will be one of the main focuses of our later modelling work.

Texturing the enemies is also one of the areas for optimisation. Currently, it is about putting helmets and trousers on the enemies. This will cover up some of the model problems and make the model look less intimidating. (Some players were shocked in the testing.)

3. Functionality & Bugs

For questions 18-22, questions were in the format of a Likert scale from 1-5 (1 being a strong disagreement and 5 a strong agreement). The summary of responses to these questions and more are below:

The general response to the functionality and bugs section of our prototype was mostly hovering in the middle. Some common pieces of feedback about bugs are as follows: 

1. After picking up the diamond, enemies failed to change direction and start walking out of the museum, instead continuing to move along the path as usual.
2. The fire extinguisher projectile did not reliably fire straight forward.
3. Enemies tend to wander around the level aimlessly after the diamond has been picked up.
4. High mouse sensitivity.

From the feedback given to us, our main goal is to fix these issues within the time we have. Enemy movement is a big one that needs to be prioritised. Additionally, from observation we noticed that some testers had issues with switching weapons - with users sometimes scrolling the webpage itself rather than controlling the game. Some players didn't understand what they needed to do at first, with one player instinctively trying to hit things in the game such as vases.

4. Suggestions

We felt it was worthwhile dedicating an entire section of the questionnaire to suggestions so that we could gauge what elements of the game needed the most attention over the last week of development.

Firstly, we anticipated that players would be confused as to the objectives of the game, and not know what to do right away. In our prototype, no instructions are given and the only information the player ahs about the game comes from the details listed on the itch.io page itself. This prompted our question about the inclusion of a tutorial level:

Clearly we need to include some form of instruction to the game, with 8 out of 9 responders in favour of either a tutorial level or instructions.

Next we asked players if they wanted more complex gameplay - with follow-up questions detailing a specific money-earning mechanic which we had thought of previously but were unsure if players would enjoy:

As we suspected, the gameplay was too simple for most players. However, it seems the majority of players were also in favour of the proposed money mechanic, with a majority of players also supporting the use of money as a means to unlock weapons. Our team wasn't sure how players would respond to these questions, and the results have been interesting to see. With only a week left of development, there is some doubt as to whether we can implement this mechanic properly or at all, but we'll see!

Speaking of limited time, the next question we asked was intended to give us an idea as to what areas we should focus on in the coming days to produce the best possible prototype. We suggested 8 possible areas of development and allowed responders to pick any number of options, with the results as follows:

Enemy behaviour was the most common answer, with sound effects a close second. Neither of these come as a shock to us, and as previous responses have indicated, the enemy movement remains as possibly the most important aspect to focus on. In our prototype, we only had sound effects for the player's footsteps and nothing else - understandably leading to the high number of responses for sound effects. Player weapons and movement were the only other two categories with significant numbers of responses, with both areas sure to receive tweaks in the coming days. On a minor note, one responder decided to select every option available, so I guess they weren't very impressed...

Finally, we asked responders to indicate which feature they would prioritise over others to be added next. In contrast to the previous question, responders could pick one answer only. This was done to get an idea as to what players would choose to add whilst under constraints - mirroring our situation as the development team with only so much time to spare.

We weren't sure exactly how the answers would be split across these options, although I found the high rate of music responses a bit surprising. The call for more levels is also understandable given that our prototype only showcased a total of 2. Thankfully nobody responded in favour of adding a new game mode, as we probably don't have the time to implement that anyway...

Our final question for this section of the questionnaire was an open-ended one asking for particular ideas for features to be added. The responses are summarised as follows:

• Two responses related to the inclusion of "more interesting" and "a few different types" of weapons.
• One response involved the implementation of more varied enemy types, such as ones that move faster or attack the player. Interestingly, we do have one enemy type that has increased movement speed - but this mustn't have been obvious enough.
• One response suggested the inclusion of sound effects to help enhance the feedback when damaging and killing enemies, in addition to the use of sound effects to enhance the immersion in general.
• One response detailed the lack of interest in exploring the levels, as there was nothing of value to find. They also suggested the ability to break the vases and indicated that this was their first instinct. There does seem to be a pattern of players sensing a lack of level interaction.
• Finally, one response asked for the inclusion of a crosshair, which actually already exists in the game. Not sure about this one, but it's very possible that the UI had broken in some way, making the crosshair disappear. We did observe some players having issues with the appearance and layout of the UI and menus, so this will require some investigation and tweaking.