Thursday, October 6, 2011

Post Playtest Analysis

- Movement is too jerky and doesn’t feel fluid. There are many times when I wanted to move, but couldn’t due to blocks next to me as I passed by. The window where you can move is too small. There’s not really much room for preemptive movements.

- Level design scale is very different from what it looks like on paper and is easily affected by the movement problem above which doesn't allow for much intricacy. General designs are good to have, but knowing exactly how those will translate to the game is crucial when using something like a text parsing system that isn’t necessarily 1:1 in feeling.

- Player’s don’t seem to care about the game because they don’t get any background information about what they’re trying to achieve. Even though they understand the mechanic they don’t understand what the motivation to be successful is. What we really need is a context to somewhat mask the mechanical objective with.

- People generally want to see more art and are taken back by how rough the game looks.

- UI is currently more of a hindrance to look to because of the general urgency of the gameplay. Make it stand out more and easier to read.

- People really enjoy the speed boosts and height power ups. Especially combined. Utilize these more, but don’t over populate the levels with them.

- A different camera angle is definitely needed for sequences in which there are more than one block high sections in your way because otherwise it completely blocks your field of view.

- A good amount of space should be placed between each power block before you get the “jump”
because you need time in between each to kind of get your bearings. Right now they’re too close to one another and if a player misses them early on and doesn’t learn what they do then they may get screwed over later on when they actually need them.

- Long sections of block may be a bad idea when there’s a complicated section right before because if you screw up that section and hit these blocks then you’ve basically lost. Maybe implement temporary invulnerability after you’ve hit a block?

- Pacing is everything and right now designing for that is a bit of a challenge. This will have to become extremely iterative in order to feel correct.

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