Playtesting is always difficult, no matter what stage you are at. It’s not easy to hear harsh words about a project you are working on.
At least, they seem harsh from our perspective.
The benefits of taking a game out as early as possible, to playtest, far out-weight the notion that waiting a little longer would mean an easier acceptance and love for the project you are working on.
This is something we have had to learn quickly too, during our development of Six Shooter Saloon. It was a precious egg we were incubating and it just wasn’t ready, in our opinion.
If it wasn’t for the kind but stern words of our lecturers in the Masters at the time, we may still be sitting on that egg.
To hear from the players is crucial. They will tell you what is good about your game, what is bad, what is broken, and most importantly where and how it can be improved. What you need to concern yourself with is the bad and the ugly. These are a priority. Even if you know about the issues being brought up by the players, you know now that it is confirmed and you can go back and work on them.
Who knows, you may be surprised with the suggestions being brought up by the players themselves. They may mention something that you didn’t think of but is key to the next phase of your development.
To playtest Six Shooter Saloon we have opted to utilise the services of itch.io – which is a website that has been set up as an ‘open marketplace for independent digital creators with a focus on independent video games. It’s a platform that enables anyone to sell the content they’ve created‘. We also used Survey Monkey to gather information and data from the playtesters of our pre-alpha build.
A unity build has been created to be uploaded to itch.io and played on the web browser. This is fantastic as there is not much fuss involved. We have formed a series of six questions to be answered at the end of the playtest.
The questions for the playtest enquired about:
- the ease of the controls;
- the opinion of the main mechanic of the game – the projectile ricochet;
- the speed at which the projectile travelled
- the number of shots per projectile allocated
- the amount of time they were allowed to wait before the enemies gave damage
- any further thoughts they may have regarding the gameplay
The itch.io page has been sent out as a link, with the survey attached in the description, to several willing participants, who were asked to complete the playtest and the survey in their own time.
We will be collecting the data and feedback in the coming days or week(s?) and will be ready to tackle the problems that arise and improve on the gameplay of Six Shooter Saloon.
The itch.io page and the survey can both be found following these links:
Six Shooter Saloon 