Dev Log 12 (Beta)

For the week of the Beta playtest, we were, unfortunately, unable to have the entire controller printed and operational for our playtesters, so we decided to hold the playtest sessions online and created a google forms sheet with the identical questions from our Alpha in-person playtest session. We collected responses from 10 participants with an overall increase in positive responses on the User Interface, something that we focused heavily on improving during the previous two weeks with constant minor tweaks to make the game feel more polished and something that could be found in a publishable game. We found that participants also became more immersed in the gameplay and asked questions including ‘Can I jump down the well?’ and ‘Can interactable objects be added?’ While we would love to add such elements to our game, we decided, for a lot of the suggestions to add more to the game, to leave aside and focus on fixing small bugs, updating portions of the game, and tweaking the game’s tutorial so that the players are less likely to become confused.

Some positive feedback we received back (to note for the final production of the game):

1. The players liked messing around in the practice area for casting spells.
2. The players enjoy casting the ultimate spells (spell combinations).
3. The game feels really polished and fun to play.

Some suggestions from the playtesters:

1. The clouds in the background on the menu screen have a small overlap glitch.
2. Add interactable objects.
3. Add more spell combinations.
4. Explain what mana/elements are.