This is it, our last week, and it was a MASSIVE one. We had five playtest sessions: ETC Festival, faculty playtest, Steenrod, Avonworth Elementary School, and Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School.
We finished the tutorial, three difficulty settings, and added in a score page to allow guests of the ETC Festival to compete while they collaborated to save the planet. The festival showing was great. We had players of all ages playing and recycling. We were even featured in an article!
Steenrod had a great time!
and we even got to run through some of our teacher handout.
The teacher handout seemed to spark a lot of good discussion, but because Steenrod has been so invested throughout the entire process and we are working with their Green Team, the data may not be the most representative of an actual usage.
With Avonworth, we only got a few minutes to test, so not much usable data came from that, but with Connoquenessing Valley, we had an amazing time. They had never seen the game before in any iteration, so they were entirely fresh. This means we were able to test the effectivness of the tutorial. Additionally, they were not a sustainability club, meaning they could more thoroughly vet the teacher handout.
The students were not as engaged with the post-play discussion as Steenrod was, but there was still good discussion and much insistence to play again. The discussion that was able to happen with just one of our team members facilitating was good, and hopefully, in the hands of a real teacher, the teacher handout could be used to engage the students after they play the game and teach them things they can do to be more sustainable.
The faculty also played, but it is always a different experience when playing with only one person per iPad.
Next week, we will have our final presentation and be pushing out our game to the app store. Here it goes.