Darryl Long

In the first session of this week, we playtested each other’s games and I got some extremely useful feedback for my game which will help me with the direction of the game. I was able to create an OBS recording to also record people on the webcam when they were playing the game, this also gives me a good idea of people’s physical reaction to the game.

The general response from the feedback was that the game gradually hurt their eyes the more and more that they played and it was actually more of a relief for them to lose the game than to continue playing. This is something that I can work with, I initially created the game to be uncomfortable to play, and made the missiles slower so that they blended into the background more easily, this created this distortion effect that made the missiles more uncomfortable to the eyes. Additionally, the base area that raises when the missiles hit the bottom of the play area is easy to look at and therefore has a lower level of comfort that the player is somewhat encouraged to take. Now that I have confirmation from other players that this is how they feel about the game, I am able to lean towards this theme of encouraging the players to relax, sit back and let the colours take away the blinding pain of the game.

This leads to some changes in the game that will be updated in the feature and technical specifications. Some of these changes might include:

• Making it more distorting and uncomfortable for players to fire missiles, which would include:
  • Pattern of the explosion to be more uncomfortable
  • Explosion to cause an uncomfortable sound when it explodes, clashing with the relaxing and calming music in the background
• Adding nice sound effects for when the missile hits the bottom of the screen and the base area raises.
• Having a moment after the game ends for players to relax and take in the soothing colours and music.
• Create a non-threatening model for the missiles traveling down the screen. (i.e. rain drops?) Or create it as missiles and simply have the player give up and look away from the screen after a while. (something to consider)

Therefore the player feedback that I received was helpful and allowed me to solidify my vision for what type of game I’m creating. This helps with the development of the game as I have an objective when implementing each section of the game, I have a vision for the end game and what the mechanics should enforce the player to do.