On week 11, we were excited and honored to have 7 playtesters to come to our project room and playtest the two prototypes we have been working on! Each playtester had 3-5 minutes on each prototype, followed by an interview. Surprisingly we even had a playtester who has been developing rhythm games, and provided us with valuable suggustions! Below are the main takeaways we learned through playtests:
- Hard to track the range bar at the bottom during the gameplay
- Most players are more focused on upper body interaction
- Some find it difficult to notice that since it’s not within the interest area
- Some cannot manage both
- Need some time to figure out the defined area for hand detection (leap motion)
- Pretty intensive exercise experience
- More visual feedback
- Lack of connection between the transparency of the notes <-> pedalling within desired range
- More direct guidance for pedaling too slow/too fast
- VFX for note hit
- More audio feedback
- Use the pitch of the music to indicate going too slow/fast
- Add sound effects for note hit
- Pedal motion does not sync with upper body movements
- Some players find it hard to feel the coordination
- Possible way of making this a rewarding daily exercise
- Add leaderboard
- Random daily sound track
Based on the feedback, we focused on adding more visual effects/UI. We added visual effects for note hit, and moved the text for “too slow”/”too fast” to the center of the screen so that players could notice them. Addtionally, the background music pitch will also change if the player cannot keep the pedalling speed within desired range, thus providing audio feedback. Here is the demo video of refined game experience:
Since some playtesters showed the disconnection between upper and lower body motion(and we are now aware of the limitations of leap motion), we decided to dig into webcam functionality to see if we are able to capture and get more info about upper body movement. This would also allow players to place their arms within a relatively comfort area. The image below shows the joints that we currently are able to get via webcam:
We also did design iterations on the idle game prototype which will be our base game in the future. In this new version, there will be a generator on the planet that produces random items for players as long as they keep pedalling. Players can choose to sell the item they produced for currency, or trade the item with other player. The currency in the game is no longer used to directly buy “assets”, instead it could be used for upgrading the generator. The higher level the generator is at, the more items it could produce, and the rank could also represents the total pedalling time of a player. Here are some new UI designs:
