Overview

Ahoy from Jelly Pirates! GDC is already here and most of us were actively involved. But things were not that slow for the team. We had a chance to make our first formal playtest on Monday March 2nd with a Dad and his 3 kids. We also had an online survey for our art style. For the rest of the week the team focused on gathering feedback from the playtest and worked on addressing some of the issues. We also get a chance to get together for a dinner during GDC for the first time with members from Silicon Valley and Pittsburgh campuses.

Progress over the Week:

Over the course of the project, we had a chance to have many informal tests with the game. We had quarters where we had people from EA come play with the prototype in addition to our weekly meeting/playtest session with our clients. But we had our first formal playtest with a father and his three sons, ages 9 through 14. We asked them a couple of questions afterwards about the gameplay and arty style. Here is the general feedback

Positive:

– Young players enjoyed the shooting mechanic

– Had fun just shooting at oncoming waves

– Navigation controls (Ship’s wheel, boost button) are understood by players

Needs Work:

– Lack of cooperative activities

– Gunners fire cannons and navigator zoomed around the level but there was minimal coordination

– Lack of clear objectives for navigator

– Navigator doesn’t feel inherent motivation to ‘direct’ shooters.  Needs additional interactions.

– Current interactions interfere with gunners instead of help (need adjustment)

– Two way communication for controllers is still absent

Next Steps:

Next week is Spring Break! The team decided to work during next week to make up for the missed progress this week at GDC.  Our plan is to work on iterations of shooting mechanic and solve some framerate issues we have been facing when bullets are spammed.