Folded Friends - Playtest

What we expected from the playtest:

Our team expected some bugs to appear while the playtesters were playing the game but nothing too game-breaking. Our game was not heavily stress-tested before the playtests and we wanted the players to find small bugs that might have been overlooked during the debugging phase. A major part of our game that we hoped players would immediately understand is the fact that the pink rocks were a button that players could stand on. Taking Super Mario levels as inspiration, we did not want to explicitly tell the players what to do. Additionally, for level 2, we knew that the WebGL build was missing the decals since it was converted and thus players would need a cheat sheet beforehand unless they play the Windows build. 

• Players were expected to recognize the pink rock as a button

What the playtest actually indicated:

General Gameplay

The playtests showed the players’ intent when playing through each level; for instance, we saw that players were actively looking for each other and trying to see each other on the same screen. This was something that we largely intended the players to feel and we were glad to see that the players felt the same way. 

A main thing that we noticed was that players were unable to immediately notice the pink rock as a button. This can be attributed to the lack of “Juice” in the object; if we were to add particle systems or sounds when approaching it, players might be more easily drawn to it rather than having to explicitly point it out with an arrow or narration. We wanted the game to be self-explanatory but failed to make it obvious.

Another thing players commented on was the final cutscene. We noticed that they were immediately drawn to the dragon breathing fire which was the main course of the cutscene. They found the dragon amusing. However, all players commented that they wanted to be able to fight the dragon but were unable to. Our team found this unfortunate as we originally sought to create a turn-based battle system with a final boss at the end, but it was scrapped early on in development as we feared it would be too difficult and it wouldn’t be completed due to time constraints. Players also wanted animations for the two main characters, another option that had to be scrapped due to time and difficulty. Originally, Jentsen had proper idle and walking stop-motion style animations implemented but they needed to be scrapped due to bugs. 

Bugs

In the playtests, we noticed that players quickly attempted to jump as they were accustomed to a WASD + Space for movement. When they attempted to jump with space, they were met with a game breaking bug that allowed them to skip a level. Additionally, since the playtesters played the WebGL build of our game, they could not complete level 2 without help since there was no way they could solve the puzzle without being able to see the decals. Furthermore, another bug that we were unable to replicate was the fact that they found a way to phase through the floor and fall through the world on level 3. Luckily, this was remediated by having the other player run into the tiger to restart the level.

Our takeaways:

A main takeaway from this playtest was the fact that players definitely wanted a way to fight the dragon. Another thing that the playtests showed was the fact that we needed to heavily bug test and playtest our game before launch. We saw that players were unable to immediately notice the fact that the pink rocks were meant to be buttons. Adding more indicators and changing the level design would help the players progress through each level. Nonetheless, players found ways to enjoy themselves in the calming environment and the simplistic co-op nature of our game. We didn’t expect the players to enjoy the cutscene as much as they did but found it a bit unfortunate that they wanted something that had to be scrapped.

Playtesters:

• Christian
• Arnav