We began week 8 with preparing our digital prototype for playtesting, iterating on various artistic, and functional elements including sound, and animations. The following was used for our first internal digital playtest.
Playtesting
After playtesting with a number of members of the Entertainment Technology Center community, the feedback was as follows:
- UI/UX – More focus needed on the angle tool, such as an angle measurement would be helpful
- Gameplay – Add treasure for rewards in the Indiana Jones style
- Art – Use particle effects for mask head instead of using the beam
In addition our professor Jesse Schell commented on a number of insightful areas for us to consider, such as:
- Why there were multiple slots on the beam generator in a level with only one gem
- Why the second mask had no fire coming out of its nose
- The light coming from the power gem was confusing
- The treasure should be in same space as the game
- Make world more juicy through interactions
- Make the world funny, silly and surprising
Based on the feedback we continued to iterate. The following is a snap shot of a later build with following changes:
- Slot to gem ratio changed at start levels to avoid confusion
- Changed animation of the masks fire stopping
We later had a meeting with John Balash at the end of the week. John had some great suggestions like when one points the beam in a wrong direction, have an animal that squeaks, and fly’s away to give some feedback.
We later presented the digital prototype to our supervisors, and began preparing for halves. In addition we scheduled a playtest for next week with Colonial School (our client) to conduct playtests with our actual audience.