PlayTest

Miles Anderson (Gigahuman)

Miles liked the concept of our game although there were some flaws that he pointed out and demonstrated during the playtest. Initially, he pointed out that our game's sensitivity was too high due to WebGL, causing the player to slide all over the place. On the first level, he had a few other criticisms. First, he had trouble getting out of the bridge builder video game, causing him to have to open the game in another tab in order to reread the controls. He also thought that the falling planks in the game were enemies so he was avoid them altogether at first instead of catching them. He also had trouble identifying the usage for the breakout game, not realizing it was supposed to be used on the debris. On the second level, he initially thought the player retained their cartridges and didn't see the bridge cartridge. And on the second level in particular he had a lot of trouble with breakout, losing a lot. 

Overall, Miles liked our game, even comparing it to Porta Boy Plus, a similar game in concept. 

Hung Nguyen (Gigahuman)

The first thing that Hung pointed out was that the sensitivity was incredibly high and the controls incredibly slippery and he had a lot of trouble controlling his character. Like Miles, he also couldn't figure out how to close the portable game. Unlike Miles though, he struggled on breakout in level 1 and lost his sense of direction towards the objective at some point, causing him to roam around aimlessly for a bit. On the second level, the shader was being rough on him, making him think unable to see the bridge outline. He also thought that the bridge builder game was too difficult, instead opting to stand in place and for the planks to fall on him instead. On the game overs, he said he'd have preferred if the player fell faster and the game over panel had a different color as the current color of the panel made it hard to read the black text if the death background was also black. Hung was especially frustrated in breakout as he lost over and over and would have preferred if there was an easier way to reset the game than turning it off then on again. Hung also expected a third game in the second level instead of the same 2 games from the 1st.

From these playtests, we learned a lot about what to do to improve our game. For starters, we should lower our sensitivity to make the game play more smooth and for greater player control. We should also add built-in instructions as both playtesters had issues with closing the portable game console at first. For the first game, we should add a mini-game UI for more clarity and make it more obvious that the planks are not something to avoid. For the second game, we should lower the difficulty by making the player paddle longer and add a restart button or key as this is the game that both of our playtesters struggled with. In level 2, we should change the shader and make it brighter as the dark shader made it hard for both playtesters in identifying the bridge's outline.