Our First Playtest

We were lucky to have a playtest so soon in March, which gives us a lot of time to work on improving the project and adding any suggestions into the game. We carried out our playtest on a group of BTEC students, who played the game two at a time; we all asked questions frequently throughout this and observed how the players responded to the game - Owen then compiled the feedback into a spreadsheet which was extremely useful for the next stage of development.

I received a lot of feedback regarding mechanics and what I could add in the future, many players pointed out the time of the game was too long - giving the players a limited timeframe to complete the game builds up tension and creates urgency, something which will make gameplay much more exciting.

The ammo bar currently isn't clear enough - players had an issue with knowing how much ammo they were limited to, it was suggested to us that each canon ball on the ammo bar should have a ring around the outside, meaning when the ammo is shot there will be an empty ring left. I think this is a very good idea and conveys the limit on the ammo clearly.

A lot of feedback was in response to the dash mechanic, so far I have only coded this by increasing the players speed to a higher amount for a short amount of time - it's clear that this method isn't working and needs to be something which is made clear. There was also a lot of confusing regarding the dash as there is currently no UI for this - this is an important aspect to work on in the future.

An easy fix which I can make to the game is to change the sensitivity, currently it is too low for the players and they feel it is hard to aim quickly, this should be fixed by simply changing a variable.

A few players suggested we add powerups to the game to create a more fun experience, this also gives them something to try and win before the other player gets it - one powerup which sounds good for our game is a 'three shot' powerup, meaning three canon balls will be shot out at the enemy when this is activated.

Overall we received a lot of feedback for our game, both positive and negative - this benefits us as we have a few more months to make improvements on our game and create something which players will find fun and engaging. I hope to add all of these mechanics into the game before our next play test to see what our players think.