Today we held our first official playtest for The Beat, The Step, and The Cowboys. While we had watched people play the game prototype multiple times, we’d never documented it. We had a lot of excellent takeaways from the process.
Types of Players
Players that felt they were most successful in the game were either players of Rhythm Games or Competitive FPS. Interestingly, based on their surveys, the FPS players actually won more games, but the Rhythm Game players, by far, had the most fun.
Play Styles
Particularly among more successful players, we saw some play styles emerge. These include:
Campers: Players who hover in one spot waiting for the other player
Bombers: Players who relied on bombing over gunning to kill players
Snipers: Players who attempted long kills
UI Issues
There are some UI issues that are affecting the player’s ability to comprehend the game. Players sometimes lose which cowboy is theirs, or when to input commands. There’s also the issue of players losing the button mappings while playing to address.
Humor
Players reacted positively to the humor: the story and dialog, the near hits and misses both elicited a lot of positive reaction.
Music
While music is more of an aesthetic than a mechanic of the game, it is a powerful one. Players reacted strongly positively to the music and greatly enjoyed playing with the beat.
As we work on expanding our design doc we will keep these playtest results in mind to guide our decisions.