Our playtesting report is a culmination of a few different weeks blogs:
March 7th playtesting with charts: https://aimlessmanor.wordpress.com/2019/03/10/playtest-march-7th/
March 11th playtesting with charts: https://aimlessmanor.wordpress.com/2019/03/15/playtest-march-11th-and-ubisoft/
Overall playtest feedback: https://aimlessmanor.wordpress.com/2019/03/22/overall-playtesting-feedback/
We opted for posting links to the individual blog posts instead of completely posting it all again here.
Problem 1:
Problem: Lack of guidance in the hallway
Candle that illuminates the doors that open are too high up to be seen
Players try out doors one by one / often go to the wrong door
Solution: Bring candles down to the ground level so the player can see which doors can be accessed
More candles around the doors
Problem 2:
Problem: Materials such as the floor have too much roughness and the tile size is too big on certain objects.
The shininess of metallic and wood materials are costly and interfering with being able to see the portals clearly. (bathroom/kitchen)
Portal texture maybe too costly and does not necessarily help players direct themselves to the next portal
Solution: Toning down the intensity of material normal/roughness/smoothness.
Adjusting shiny objects to be less shiny near the portals. Portals ripple effect helps them stand out.
On high spec mode the portals reflects where the players will end up teleporting to, so they indicate to the player where they will be.
Problem 3:
Problem: Hard to distinguish between essential object and general interactable objects (bathroom)
Solution: Essential objects now have glimmer effects and highlights when you walk near them to indicate that they can be picked up
Problem 4:
Problem: Confused by where the portal takes them and what the portals do.
Solution: Added a secondary tutorial room that teaches player what the portal is
Problem 5:
Problem: Sometimes essential items are harder to see under certain lighting
Solution: Kitchen scenes like the cauldron are now illuminated with a spotlight. More items will be clearly illuminated against a darker background
Problem 6:
Problem: Inventory could only use one item at a time, but can hold both things at once, so they had to drop an item to use the other item (kitchen)
Solution: Now inventory can only hold one thing at once
The player also knows which next item to find (in order)
Problem 7:
Problem: Players sometimes walk into a room and leaves before they complete the objective since the doors are open.
Players need something to guide them to their objective in game (hallway/bathroom)
Solution: Locking the players in
Voice/visual cues to tell the player again what they need to accomplish before leaving
Problem 8:
Problem: Players often disorient themselves after teleporting from portal to portal
Solution: A cube that is a HUD (on the top right) to showcase which surface the player is on.
Problem 9:
Problem: Sometimes the player will experience one second of delay as the room loads when they open the door.
Door sometimes knocks player back if they are too close (hallway)
Solution: Player root first load a simple room without details and then replace with actual room when fully loaded
Door opens the other way
Problem 10:
Problem: Players want to walk directly to the ending staircase (hallway)
Solution: Ending staircase will be unlocked after player collecting all keys
Problem 11:
Problem: Players always want to pick up and interact with the items in the hallway
Players likes explore and interact with all things in their environment
Players want to play around with non-essential items
Breaking objects are integrative to the narrative of destroying the manor’s valuables.
Solution: All non-essential items should not be pick-up-able, but should only be able to be shattered upon interact. Most items in the bathroom are currently breakable, but the hallway interactables and the kitchen interactables still need to break
Cabinets and drawers are all openable when the players interact with them
Here is a demo of what we currently had for the demo:
Through our playtesting sessions so far, we discovered that our testers really love being able to open doors and drawers. As a designer with programming experience, I created a few tools to lighten the load on our dedicated programmers while making it easier for our artists to set up scenes with more interactions without needing to create dozens of different animations.
Just wanted to share a demo of this floor design template I made for our team to use when creating floor tiles and sections. It’s a triangular grid that simplifies the process of lining up the geometry and making sure all parts are symmetrical.
After the playtest on March 11th and Ubisoft we got a lot of further feedback on how we can improve our game and a lot of different things we’re going to have to discuss. Here is what people said:
For reference: ! in the text below means what they’ve actually said
PERSON 1:
PERSON 2:
PERSON 3:
PERSON 4:
PERSON 5:
PERSON 6:
PERSON 7:
PERSON 8:
PERSON 9:
PERSON 10:
PERSON 11:
PERSON 12:
PERSON 13:
PERSON 14 (not on survey):
— PLAYTEST: UBISOFT (Thursday) —
ART:
LEVEL DESIGN:
AI:
LEVEL DESIGN:
AI:
LEVEL DESIGN:
ART:
OVERALL: really cool
Q&A:
Level Design:
We’ve finally got our game into the hands of players to truly understand how they played it and what they thought of it.
We got a lot of great feedback that will help us iterate before the Ubisoft demo next week.
The feedback:
Tutorial
-players look around the room without prompting
-trouble walking up the centre platform because it requires player to hold and walk up onto it but almost everyone just gave up and thought they couldnt go on the platform
-circles the room atleast once before noticing the portal. believes the door should open instead
-does not always recognize the portal as a space to walk through (a more dramatic cue may be needed)
-skull is difficult to pick up
-skull button prompt does not always show up
-portal out of room sometimes is white or black
-Sometimes do not notice the key
Hallway
-Majority checks the items on tables (attracted to shiney things)
-Everyone did not know which door to go to
-Half of players walked to end of hall believing that was the next area due to the open space shown
-players did not know to use interact button on door to open it
-someone requested the next available door to have a spotlight on it
-candle not obvious enough
Bathroom
-When entering the bathroom, player rises a little bit off the ground
-Lag in bathroom and lag continues when leaving room
-Footsteps helpful guide as to where to go
-Players got very motion sick (due to low fps)
-Players got sick from motion blur (due to low fps)
-Confused by looking up in the bathroom
-Cannot find the key after returning to floor
-Cannot make distinction between ceiling and floor
-Foot steps caused confusion when on the wall (may be due to low fps)
General Comments/Observations
-Level Up is LOUD. Do not rely on subtle audio clues
-Unsure what to do next when did not hear audio prompts clearly
-More visual indicators to the next step
-Headphones > earbuds at Level Up
-Confused by the crosshair and object hold location on screen (however, this was only Erika)
-Object that player is holding grows in size when pressed against the target area it is supposed to be placed in (model size actually changes. This occurs in tutorial and kitchen)
-Object highlight needed on objects that can be picked up
-particle effect needed on key
-game feels boring when there are no instructions or when player misses the instruction
-game feels boring when what they think can be picked up in non-interactable
-want to pick up shiny objects
-when teleporting between floor and walls, the two require clear distinction in the material
-motivated to play the game because of aesthetics
This gives us a lot of information for us to work with and in our group meeting on Friday we planned accordingly.
For starters, we’re going to re-vamp the tutorial room so that things like walking up the ramp are much easier and also fine tuning everything so the player knows exactly what they’re doing at all times.
Next, in the bathroom, we’re going to implement optimizations so that the players no longer face lag and making sure that players know which floor side they are on at all times by differentiating them in some way.
After that, we’ve taken into account some of the general observations/feedback the players gave. We’re going to look into better visual cues whether that be an object outline or better indication of where to go, independent of the voice. Next, we want to add more interaction to the rooms. Cabinets in the kitchen should be openable, drawers in the hallway should be openable etc.
Currently, our team is preparing for the playtest Thursday so I just wanted to make a brief update in regards to what we are all working on and trying to get ready.
Recently, we decided that our bathroom tutorial room wasn’t good enough. It didn’t introduce picking up objects or going through portals, you just sort of had to find out how to do that. Instead of the bathroom as the tutorial room, we’ve decided to create a room that happens before the bathroom. In order to make sure the playtesters fully understand how to play the game without having our help this new tutorial room will have voice lines depicting what to do as well as a very clear guide on how to proceed to get out of the tutorial. This should help players easily pick up our game.
Next, we’ve decided to revamp the bathroom itself to amplify some of the weirdness of the manor. We did this by increasing all the dimensions of the room and increasing the bathroom ceiling height to comical proportions. This will allow us to further show that this isn’t some normal manor with a simple ghost training grounds.
After that, we’ve decided to fix the kitchen puzzle by using portals to allow yourself to move into objects (such as the fridge) and onto the walls/roof to solve puzzles. One thing we didn’t previously do enough of is using our really cool portal mechanic to play the game. It was previously only done once in the bathroom and there was a massive disconnect between the puzzle in the bathroom and the kitchen.
Lastly, we’re working on bringing together the narration with the overall story and connecting those with the puzzles to make our game feel more cohesive.
Our game has a ton of models and our team has been hard at work creating them. Below are the models Natalie has made so far.
Due to the fact our game has a lot of models I wanted to make sure that all the models are properly showcased and shown off!
As we’ve progressed through the reading week we’ve been able to create a demo showcasing quite a few different things about our game. There are two main things we wanted to be done for the alpha. First, we’d really like to have three rooms: the hallway, the bathroom, and the kitchen fully worked out in regards to puzzles and wall/roof walking. Second, we want different rooms to be able to connect in a NON RANDOM way.
We know that we’re a bit behind in development because we ended up switching our concept but we were able to make quite a bit of progress:
After the presentation on Feb 25th we got a few comments:
2 puzzles completed?
– wasn’t clear that we showed both puzzles
initially when you are presenting the concept w/o dictating the game
– need to explicitly define what the game is
– what are you really doing
– what is your main feature
– no friction with first time user: keep in mind of small window space to engage your audience
– “gratifying???” first time user experience
– if you have to explain to them, a lot won’t even listen
– people won’t even listen @ level up just even due to being audio queues
– if you put it in someone’s hand + don’t say anything, they should figure out what to do on their own
– like being going upside down, but what is the benefit
– how can you complete the game with it? b/c it seems like it’s not NECESSARY right now
– rendering: first pass? or use different lighting + shaders
Considered what the brand is going to look like?
– The identity
– Brand
– Logo mark
– Before trying to even engage in the game, that’s important
Stars on everything that’s interactive
– What is the challenge if all are lead the player through?
– Promote exploration a bit more
2nd puzzle: go up in difficulty from tutorial
– currently have a lot of steps
– you can make a lot in that room interactable in the future
– ease player into it
– might have subtleties
Instead of stars on walls, footsteps
– clear transition whent hat happens? in a different mode
– looks like instantaneous now
– so why do you have to get on the ceiling if you can interact on the floor
– establish constraint
? How to hook with tutorial
– Usually put the player on “rails”
– Walk though them for first “place” so they understand rationale
– What is my objective = so they can either get off the rail or stay on it
– small visual cues to EASE person into game
– either audio cues or small dialogue
– PRESENT the audience the opportunity to dismiss or learn from the game
– need to have handholding
– LEVEL UP REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY LOUD
– if use audio cues, bring GOOD HEADPHONES
– if stove has red light = red light = cannot use, but how can i make this usable?
– SHOW what they can use and they cannot
– have symbols (ex) on door
– whatever is A PUZZLE in an escape room – made CLEAR that you know it’s a part of the puzzle
– a part of the immersion
– Particle effects do take you out of the immersion
When the person is actually collecting the keys
– IMPORTANT TO REINFORCE ACCOMPLISHMENT
– they need engagement so they can get more
– when you play “candy crush” – positive engagement
– Significance of combining the three items?
– Hitchhiker’s guide to the galay’s level of arbitrariness of the combining
STEVE: you had that interesting thing to travel between portals
– understand why portals work in the first room, but didn’t use in the second room
– cool if you did more to explore more sides of the room to solve the puzzle
– (basically implement portals in every room)
– need more exploration than arbitrary experience
EMMA: How do you get the pleasure to the player as quickly as possible
– quick PAY OFF
– emphasize PLEASURE + visually
– provide motivation + measurement of “win”
– don’t do slow-burner which takes more attention to detail and time which players may not have
– Reinforcement: HAVE A STORY TO IT
– no reason to find the keys right now
– story hoooooooook
– too late to the saying the story
– lead in to your game so first thing to say to understand situation
– nothing in the game that makes it feel like your story (ghost)
– like maybe 3rd person perspective to see why you are ghost
– first person can see, point, click, and thus have no point to interact
make it so that users can appreciate the mechanics
Now that we have some feedback on our alpha we know there’s a lot of things we are going to need to focus on.
This week specifically we will work on making our tutorial better and create better kitchen puzzles so that when we give it to playtesters its more fun to play.
As the alpha approaches, there are a few things we need to have prepared. First, we’d really like to have three rooms: the hallway, the bathroom, and the kitchen fully worked out in regards to puzzles and wall/roof walking. Second, we want different rooms to be able to connect in a NON RANDOM way.
As of the current state of the game, we’re able to have the player going through paintings in order to switch from one room orientation to the other. Since this is a core mechanic for our games pivot we wanted to make sure this got done early in the week. As of today, this is the current state of that:
From here, we can start to build out our game a bit more. By Friday we’d like to have a rough demo of our starting hallway, the bathroom, and the kitchen.
Aimless Manor DevBlog 