Playtesting
How has playtesting affected your development?
When you are in a project it can be hard to see the whole picture but when someone from the outside gets an input they can come with incredibly solutions to problems the group didn’t even realize existed. Things the group thought would be fun weren’t. Things the group thought would be clear was misunderstood by the players. So the group really made sure to get the different playtesters thoughts and inputs documented so they could know what they really had to work with and change. All the members of Kraken took notes while the players were testing the game.
The whale’s health bar
The whales principles was easy enough to understand. The player shoots at the whales big crystal on its back and the health bar was extremely simple and clear. So there wasn’t much Kraken had to change with the whale.
The players health bar and weapon power up
The players did not really understand the difference between the player’s health bar and the power up bar. A whole lot of people missed the fact that they had to shoot crystals in order to keep the laser powered up, so a lot of players died because they didn’t have any weapons working, and they didn’t understand why the laser stopped working.
The crystals was one of the main thing people mentioned they missed while playtesting, and that was why Kraken made the blue crystals to clarify the different abilities the crystals have. The blue one keeps your laser powers up and the red on causes damage to the whale.
The laser
Some people thought that the laser was to powerful while some other people thought it wasn’t powerful enough.
The harpoon was a real problem
There was a bug when trying to aim it and people didn’t really understand it. It is supposed to be used to destroy the crystals of the whales back. But how do you get access to the harpoon? How often can you use it. These are things the group have to work on to clarify that they didn’t really realize was a problem.
Feedback
Once the playtesters had played the game they got to give the group some feedback in their own words.
Arts_n_Games 