UNDERGROUND

For our playtesting, we focused on three major areas of our core gameplay mechanics: character control, combat, and level design. Our progress on each had been good, however we had some concerns about using a fixed-rotation camera and whether the combat fit the game and level design. Our team wrote a simple script to introduce the game and ensure consistent testing. For measurement, we used a little bit of think-aloud during the playtesting to get a general idea of how the gameplay was going, Likert scale questions for the bulk of measurement, and finally we asked participants for any final remarks after they had been guided somewhat by the Likert scale questions. In each category, we used the data and observations collected to adjust our design.

Responses to the character were mixed at best and helped to highlight some key problems. First, keyboard controls do not work for the movement in Underground, especially for the first room. The game requires a level of fine control that a keyboard just cannot offer. Another character problem discovered as a result of playtesting was with the movement and the camera. Since the camera did not rotate with the player, players saw the movement as somewhat unnatural and found this aspect difficult to get used to. Players also felt that a fixed-rotation camera did not properly fit the game, which is clear to see from the results.

Feedback about the core mechanics and ideas of combat was positive. Most players felt that combat has a place in Underground and that it did enhance the levels. However, they also felt that the combat could use some work and that it didn’t feel very fluid and responsive. Players found enemies difficult to hit, and to remedy this we will be increasing the size of the collision on the player’s weapon. Combat also did not have any feedback, making it even more difficult to determine the result of a hit, causing players to miss a lot of hits since they were unsure that previous hits were successful.

To fix this, we plan to add a number of feedback mechanisms. First, we will add a health bar to the player’s UI. This will help the player know how much damage the enemies are doing and how close the player is to death. Second, we will add sound effects to the combat. This will further help the player know how much they are being damaged and let the player know when they are damaging the enemy. One final change we plan to make is the reduction of enemy health. During playtesting exercise, we set the player to kill the NPCs in about four hits, and this felt too long to most players. Our group has decided that we should bring the health down so that NPCs can be killed in just two hits.

Level design was the final area our group examined during the playtesting. We were mainly concerned with how well the player interacted with the level, and how the puzzles fit within the level. Overall, player response to the level design was very good. Players felt that the level design provided unique opportunities to experience the various mechanics that Underground offers. There were a few problems we had though, mostly involving some cleanup of the levels. First, some players had trouble jumping over parts of the level. To remedy this, we are going to lower the jumpable collisions to ensure players are easily able to maneuver over obstacles they should be able to. We are also going to raise unjumpable collisions a bit more to make it obvious where players should and should not able to jump. We would also like to add additional types of puzzles. The player response to challenge was not quite as high as we had hoped. As you can see in the results below, it was still mostly positive, but not entirely.