Posted October 06, 2022 by perfectcatto
Testing for the game was a success. It was extremely helpful watching fresh players figure out the controls and physics system of the game, and showed us all the important parts that need to be worked on. A few changes were actually made alongside testing, with total of 4 different new builds being pushed to the itch.io page with feedback and bug fixes during the 2 hour session.
For testing we made use of a Google forms sheet to get reports on how to improve the prototype as well as gauge player feedback and feelings towards the prototype. The following form was used:
https://forms.gle/1GkikVXdteKvHSJGA
Tester bug reports written for us include:
One issue that stumped us was that some players experience mega jitters (as we titled it) where their model was stuck on something completely unknown that other players had no issue with. We thought maybe it was a hardware issue or a screen refresh rate issue but we honestly have no idea.
A few bugs such as infinite falling and attacking the 'nests' (enemy spawners) were patched during the session.
Other bugs that need fixing - and some potential plans to address them:
Testers were asked "If you were to make the game more enjoyable, what would you change?", they responded with:
The horde enemies was one of the first suggestions, since during development the enemies were set to much higher health than they should have been. This was one of those changes we made concurrent with the session, and pushed a new build while testing was still going and was one of the most agreed suggestions due to the simple fact that killing large numbers of enemies instantly is very fun and gratifying, particularly when you through in the blood particles that spill out when defeated.
Other suggestions for future changes we had were; rewards for killing a spawner (such as health packs or stat boosts), auto-ending day phase after collecting powerup (motivation for getting a powerup after already having one)
A potential solution for several of the suggestions to do with lack of motivation or reason to do things such as kill enemies, spawner, or finish day loops fast could be resolved with a currency and shop system, we will likely not touch on this concept in the prototype but such a thing would be a very likely addition in potential future builds, potentially having a shop active during the day.
Much of the physics issues were a result of underestimating how hard it is to get physics working and feeling right in a game like this, in future this kind of system would be much more manageable to be written from scratch as opposed to trying to cobble together pre-written code with patchwork methods to make it work the way we want.
The reason for collecting data on people's opinions on the visuals was that one of the selling points for the game was the visual style. We wanted to know if we managed to deliver or not.
There was overwhelmingly good feedback on the visuals and models for the game. Everybody loved the animations and the models, and most people thought the cel shading was nice. There were a few issues with the terrain being so 'blank' that people didn't realise the floor was walkable and thought it was a drop-off. These issues can be fixed by adding some dimension to the terrain (something that we previously had but had to turn off to port to WebGL for.. compiler reasons..)
Some of the tester feedback for visuals is as follows:
I feel that getting these responses for our prototype build shows that we have potential for the market with our visual style.