Playtesting is a vital component when it comes to the development of a game. It’s through playtesting that you get feedback from ideally the target group of your game. This feedback gives you a heads-up whether you are working towards the goal or if there is something steering you adrift. There are different kinds of playtesting where the objectives behind it differ. It could be playtesting from a technical or aesthetic standpoint. Each playtesting gives different feedback to build upon.
One such technical feedback that was prominent in from the first playtest of our game was the camera. While everyone could move around fine and mostly understood the control there was an issue of dizziness. While playing the testers would feel disoriented from the speed the camera followed the player and how the background followed the camera. This feedback was something unexpected for us since while playing ourselves we didn’t notice this. Just another point to show what playtesting is about. To reveal what we miss in our development or haven’t thought about.
The biggest aesthetic feedback regarding our game is that the player is often unsure at the beginning of where they are going and what they’re supposed to do. While one aspect of our game’s aesthetics is mystery we don’t want the player to be clueless about everything happening in this game. A tutorial can solve this in part, so could simple narrative segments of text. Providing scraps of purpose and direction which the player can build upon themselves as they play. However, it has to be further playtested to see if this works or if another solution is needed. For example, narrowing down the space in which the player can traverse through or make a “path” made of power-ups for the player to follow.
One other side-effect the playtesting had was a surprise. It was encouraging to see players exploring and being engaged in the game even though at times like the alpha playtesting there was barely anything there. Seeing them playing the game over and over and exploring each component of the game was interesting and it felt like we were heading in the right direction. It was a good morale booster that gave us energy back towards the project.
Thank you for reading this weeks blog post
Project manager of team Cockatrice 
Hello Siri, after reading your blog I realized that you pointed out two interesting aspects of play testing. First, you noted that after the play testing, it boosted-up energy and morale in your group. Probably it’s something you will not find in guidelines, but was also true among other student groups. You wrote “One other side-effect the playtesting had was a surprise. It was encouraging to see players exploring and being engaged in the game […] Seeing them playing the game over and over and exploring each component of the game was interesting […] It was a good morale booster that gave us energy […]”. I can fully agree with your point, and understand the “side-effect” that successful play testing can have to a group. The wave of energy can be managed wisely to boost up not only the morale among the team members, but also direct development in the right direction. I can encourage you to do serious analysis and critical evaluation of the feedback from test playing, so each individual member in your group cannot ignore it. Second point I found interesting was about players’ experience with atypical controlling used in your game, as you wrote “[…] the control there was an issue of dizziness. While playing the testers would feel disoriented […]”. I would say that feelings of dizziness or be disoriented is surely not what you want to provide in your shoot-em-up game. However, to discover side effects of playing games on humans is advanced part of user experience tests. Also, many scientific studies are aimed to investigate the effects of playing atypical games on physical and mental health. As I can remember, you are the only one, who mentioned this aspect in play testing in the course, thank you for that. Well, game development is a series of complex tasks, and it’s challenging to solve them. I wish you good luck in your studies!
//Karel
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Hello, Siri. This is Jesper from Vampire.
I decided to comment on your blog since, at the time of this comment, your programmers have no post for me to comment on.
You stress the importance of playtesting throughout the blog post and you also provide concrete examples of how it has been beneficial to your development. As a programmer, I agree that playtests are very important since the risk of the developers themselves missing something crucial is fairly significant. You bring merit to this claim by bringing up the technical feedback you received regarding the camera, and how you as developers never considered it an issue yourselves.
The blog post is well structured, which makes it very easy to follow along. You mention that there are different purposes of playtests, define these purposes, and then connect them to feedback you have received yourselves. This is a great way to keep a clear connection throughout the text and give a sense that everything is tied together. You clearly communicate the content and purpose of this blog post from beginning to end.
All in all, this is an informative and well written blog post.
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