Playtest Reflection

Our playtest survey form can be found here: https://forms.gle/8cSf9JzEuR2jF1Z9A

As of the writing of the post, the provided feedback is as follows:

What was one aspect that you disliked about the game?

• There wasn't a display of what controls to use/any introduction to the game (besides the start menu) before being placed directly into a level.
• It was difficult to properly distinguish between the two different triangle items, due to their somewhat similar color and I wasn't able to tell what was closer to the cheese color.
• The game just throws you in with minimal directions :(. Also, the score system was not working for me.

What was one aspect that you liked about the game?

• The art :) I also liked when the grey rat showed up, although I still have no idea what it does.
• The ghost rat was a neat concept! 
• I like the rat. The title screen graphics are cute.

If you could add one thing to the game, what would you want to do?

• At least a brief showing of the controls/objective/enemy. "Avoid the cat while using WASD/Arrow keys to pick up food."
• If you could add some sort of visual indicator of your progress, it would be nice (I was initially very confused when the screen kept resetting) 
• More guidance for the player would be nice :).

Was there anything within the game that you would want to change? 

• The camera didn't always follow the rat's scurrying. The scurrying itself was also not very smooth, although I'm not sure if that was on purpose.
• I noticed that the cat could clip through the tables, I'm not sure if that was intentional 
• Just what I mentioned above!

How would you describe the game to someone you know?

• Make a sandwich as a rat while avoiding imminent cat death.
• Depending on who I am describing the game to, I might describe it as "like pacman, but with a rat looking for food" 
• Rats on a mission and there's also a cat. Chaos! >:)

After watching people playtest our game, it became clear that the main thing we lacked was feedback for the player. For instance, our playtesters pointed out a lack of guidance at the beginning, with no instructions regarding what the controls were or what the ultimate goal was. While WASD/arrow keys are a common input method -- and the playtesters were eventually able to use them to move the mouse -- having an instructional or tutorial phase would have benefitted the gaming experience; especially since one of the players specified not knowing what the "gray rat" was meant to do, despite it being a core game mechanic. 

Additionally, this lack of feedback extends to the UI as well. While the addition of the menus does provide some clarity as to what the player is collecting, having the ingame items not reflect the drawn menu items makes it more difficult for the player to find the items they need, doubly so since there wasn't a clear distinction between the yellow triangle -- which was not meant to be a collectable -- and the lighter yellow triangle, which was meant to represent cheese. The playtesters also rightfully suggested an indicator for the level, as the constant resetting of the scene was confusing without full awareness of what was happening. This also ties in with the earlier point of providing instructional feedback to the player, which could also help explain what exactly was happening when the screen resets. 

Furthermore, a lack of player feedback also encompasses our overall game feel. The camera was not entirely callibrated to the rat's movements, as the rat is often able to "outrun" the camera. Additionally, the cat was able to clip through walls, which does ruin the immersion a bit. The appearance of the ghost rat was also a bit inconsistent, as we did not have time to fix the bug where the ghost rat would appear on every level once spawned, rather than solely after a player's initial completion of a level. Overall, the playtest helped us pinpoint the biggest issue with the current state of the game, and were we to continue developing it, our playtesters have given us a clear direction to work towards.