10/10 Playtest Report

Write a one page report (150-200 words) describing what you learned and what you will change in the game. List at least 10 changes you will make to your game based on the playtests. I'm not grading this for eloquence but SPELL CHECK and use proper grammar.

Each team should post the report to their blog.

           From the onset it was clear that what people enjoyed most about the game was the actual biting mechanic itself. Almost everyone that played laughed at the start of the game (thanks to the art and sound as well) and thought mashing to score was very engaging. The problems started arising when the player tried to look for more depth in the game, and in trying to understand exactly what was going on in the game at times.  These problems were mostly tied to how the player read the animations (of the turtle, zookeeper, and children) and how the score was perceived. In addition, many players kept questioning if the score indicator was for points or simply a time limit. There was also confusion on what the actual end state of the game is. Many of these problems we saw coming (since there are still some animations and gameplay tweaks to implement), but now have a concrete idea of what we need to do to push the overall fun factor of the game. Here are the top ten planned changes based on the playtests:

1)      Clearer Zookeeper signals and animations = for many people, reading the zookeeper was too difficult and often times it felt too random to understand what he was actively doing.

2)      Clearer controls = telling the player to mash meant something different to everyone, the controls need to be relayed clearer or simplified a bit.

3)      Speed up timing of children = for some, the wait period between children swapping in and out was too long.

4)      More feedback when a child is bit.

5)      Implement clearer win and lose state.

6)      Clearer feedback when receiving hand (when the score goes up basically).

7)      Clearer indication that the hand over the turtle is for points, and not a timer.

8)      Push risk/reward gameplay further = right now there was no reason for a player to not play it safe when they were mashing/waiting for the next child.

9)      Push the bloodiness of the graphics a bit more.

10)  Incorporate tutorial for the entire game.