Welcome to Week 7 of my Development Diary. The focus of this week is to start getting the game tested by five other people to be able to see the general impression around the game. These impressions will be used to understand what they like and dislike about the prototype and what areas can make further improvements/suggestions with future development. I will also be testing out other prototypes during the week to see what ideas caught my attention during my time testing.
Firstly, since the prototype was ready for testing at the start of the week with feedback form prepared and the game fully working, I began getting people to test my game out for feedback. During this, I would watch the tester play the game and discuss them while they play the game by giving questions and suggestions to try out a specific feature such as switching weapons. I did this because I wanted to get more information from the tester toward one particular area I had concerns about, such as controls and ensuring that every feature is explored during the gameplay.
The outcome from creating the discussion worked out very positively at the end, where I was able to gain more accurate data on the controls from the tester. The overall outcome of the tests was that the majority praised the many features and weapon choices that the prototype had to offer. However, there was criticism toward the controls style since most testers found it difficult to move and shoot at the same time due to bad mapping. I can quickly agree with this feedback since it is an area of accessibility that could be improved. Below are some of the feedback I had received during the testing of my prototype.
As with the choice and features of the prototype, I am most pleased with how it turned out because the shooting mechanic works well with each of the weapons. However, I would like to add a future weapon and power up in later development based on feedback. One suggestion that came up is to include an explosive type of weapon, for example, a grenade or rocket launcher, as this would require more understanding of how multiple bullets could be generated to the game world after the impact of the parent bullet.
From my experience of testing other people, prototype there are not too many notable ones that stood to me because they mostly share the same idea of the 2D platformer. However, I tested a top-down screen-based game that featured a randomly generated room as you entered a door. This idea stood out for me because I would want to experiment with creating randomizes in games, and I would like to explore creating a top-down screen-based game in the future.