Date : 17th April,2015
“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be”
-Khalil Gibran
This week the team geared towards preparing for softs which is on Tuesday 21st April, 2015. Which means that there was a lot of improvement in the build then what it was there before. The team also conducted two playtests to see if the game was easy to understand and play.
So, the week started off by making a list of things that needs to be done by the softs and the week after that. The team then started working towards the two big playtests and softs. We tweaked small features in the game. For example : we changed the *double tap to start the game* to *stare at this point to start the game*, then *tap to change direction* to *look at the arrow on the lane to change the direction*. This was to make sure, we have a uniform and core mechanic throughout the game. Next, we changed our tutorial settings. We added an interactive tutorial to teach player the game features and the mechanic. We also added a 2D floating screen to switch between tutorial and the actual game mode.
After making these changes, we conducted two playtest. 1. On the 17th April, 2015 with Electronic Arts employees. We got around 6 people to test our game. The main feedback went around: give more visual feedback to the players during the tutorial and in-game, enhancing the game with sound and effects, will make the game more fun, the map/game looks good now, but adding more things in the environment to get a sense of 3D world. One of the playtesters mentioned, using head motion as input causes motion sickness.
With all these feedback, we then conducted a playtest at the CMU – Silicon Valley Campus Carnival on April 18, 2015. At first, the team was not keen to test with completely naive users. But it turned out to be a very successful playtest. We found that some children and all the adults liked our game, and felt that it was easy to pick the game mechanic and features. They mentioned it was fun to play the game. We got useful feedback from this test. Most of the testers mentioned about adding in sounds, animations and effects to make it more lively and fun.
For the coming week, we have a new environment to add into the game. We have animations for our characters. We are also going to work on sounds and particle effects to enhance the users experience on the glasses and give them an opportunity to view a beautiful 3D world using Augmented Reality.