Playtesting at Playtech

What I Learned

• The kiddos loved the game

• Some couldn’t be wrenched away for at least an hour at a time
• Much fun was had flying off the edges

• Some testers said the speed was too slow and/or the turning speed was too slow
• When players found out they could push other people off the edge, they were happy
• Some reviewers said it was nauseating, but I expected that

I was testing for two things at Playtech - Understandability and Balance

• In terms of Intuitiveness - most folks didn’t get that triggers accelerate you until I explained it. However, once they did get that part, everything else was intuitive enough. The first button people pressed was most of the time A, so they got to experience switching gravity first.
• In terms of Balance - The player who ended up in a particular place at the end of the first lap usually tended to stay in that place until the end of the game. I hope to alleviate this by making players in different places go different speeds as well as giving more advantages to the players in the last places. Skill is also a major aspect of deciding who gets into what places, so I’m happy about that.
• Other than the first question about how to accelerate, there were no problems about players not knowing what to do or where to go. Occasionally someone would mention flying off into nothingness but they would be returned to the track soon enough because they hit the edge of the world.

Things I plan to change based on this playtest:

• Decrease lap count from 4 to 3
• Increase the difference between speeds depending on player placement
• Performance optimization - delete unnecessary assets and gameobjects, adjust the UI, and fix a bug that allowed players to drive where they’re not supposed to