Week 4: Beta Playtesting

Development Progress

1. What has been recently completed?
   • An introductory tutorial was added to cover the basic mechanics was added
   • Casting is now constrained by each governing resource value
   • Interaction is now more accurate and easier to use
   • Improved Earth Puzzle
   • Modifications were made to the puzzles so that they are more intuitive and understandable
     • Buttons are more distinguishable
     • Tool tips added to interactable objects
     • Water valves now animate
   • Additional assets added to the project
   • Bug fixes
2. What each of us is currently working on:
   • Cody: 
     • Air machine
     • Additional assets and level design improvements
     • Final puzzle hints
   • Michael: 
     • Finishing the introductory tutorial
     • Making sure puzzles complete as expected and are disabled upon completion
   • Travis: 
     • Adding materials to the environment
     • Adding inanimate objects to restrict player movement and guide them through the level
3. What features/ideas are on the backlog are to be done next?
   • Add hidden clues to understand the puzzles
   • Add Earth-affected objects
   • Add a success screen
   • Improve visibility of each puzzle when solving
   • Improve the user experience as a whole by minimizing confusion
4. Analysis of play-testing:
   • Highlights of the play tests somewhat grouped:
     • Work on a guidance system for the player.
     • Maybe add more text with explanations because I was able to understand all the puzzles after only some explanation from the creators.
     • So hard to figure out what to do.
     • I found that there wasn’t a whole lot to go off of in terms of figuring out what I needed to do, but once I did figure it out, it was a lot of fun.
     • Last puzzle needs more guidance.
     • The end puzzle was difficult.
     • The puzzle is too hard.
     • Consider making puzzles easier?
     • Play-ability is low.
     • Add more puzzles.
     • Having more puzzles would make the game longer and more fun.
     • Needs more thematic consistency.
     • Collecting element mana is slow.
     • Make elements more important.
   • Decisions based on feedback:
     • Many people noted a lack of direction in the game. To address previous play tests and now this one, the team had already added a tutorial for movement and will be creating further tutorials for interaction and element use.
     • From the beginning we knew the final puzzle would be very difficult for the average person to solve and have had a card in our Trello for a while saying to add clues for final puzzle to the room, hiding them in things to clean. An example would be a clue hidden behind several Soot pane prefabs on a part of the main room’s walls. The team believes this will address the play test notes.
     • Based on play tests, the team has to decided to cut the number of buttons/lights on the fireplace puzzle in half to bring its complexity in line with the other element producing puzzles.
     • For play-ability, the team is looking into adjusting the physics of the player character (this is a GameObject, not the actual Unity Component) to allow for more precise movement so that it is easier for the player to position themselves in the world.
     • No more puzzles will be added both by design and time constraints.
     • More models have been created and will be added to the scene soon to better model the fantasy theme.
     • The absorption rate from element wellsprings will be increased to reduce the wait time for refilling the meters.
     • More game objects that react to elements will be added, like more soot spots, debris, cobwebs, and strewn rocks.
5. Obstacles that are blocking development:
   • Ensuring that the experience for the user is understandable and their objectives are clear for each puzzle.
   • Finals week, work, and graduation-related functions making development time less abundant
6. Reflection on game and process. What is working, what is not working.
   • Working: Delegation of tasks is very effective allowing us to work in parallel
   • Not Working: Breaking up tasks can be challenging when there are interactions or dependencies between different people’s work. Overall, this method has been productive and effective.