Playtesting, Patience Testing
I realize that I've mentioned playtesting a lot in previous entries, without going into a lot of detail about what it actually entails. I've decided to remedy that in this entry.
Playtesting, as the name implies, is the process of testing out your game, by having somebody else play it. Playtesting can, and should happen at every stage of development. The earlier you start playtesting, the better! This is the generally accepted advice of most game producers, but despite this, it can be very tricky to actually put into practice.
Why? Because it can be VERY tempting to keep your game in progress a secret until you feel that you have something worth sharing. The problem is, if you have a tendency to doubt yourself, you might NEVER feel ready to share your work. If you've ever had a friend who is interested in drawing, you might notice that they're particularly reluctant to let you peek at their notebook, even though you think they're incredibly talented. Game Developers do exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, playtesting is an integral part of producing a game.
I'll give you an obvious example: As the designer, you inherently understand how everything in your game is supposed to work. You know how to use the controls, how to win the game, how to trigger cutscenes, how to access the menus, etc. The problem is, players don't. It is your job, or rather your game's job, to teach them this, as part of the experience. I won't dive into the subject of tutorials in this entry, the important takeaway is that you can't always be there to explain how the game should be played, and so you have to design the game to do it for you.
Playtesting is the best way to determine if players understand how they're supposed to play, if the tutorial you've created is getting the information across correctly.
Playtesting is also guaranteed to help you to identify bugs that you otherwise wouldn't have spotted. I can tell you from experience that you will NEVER play your game the same way your players will. No two players are the same, and you will occasionally recoil in horror as you watch them interact with the virtual world you've created in a way that you didn't expect.
I once asked my brother to playtest the very first game I ever made.In one of the levels, the player character is trapped in a cell, and must interact objects in the environment to escape. One of the items was a little beach ball that bounced around a little when you clicked on it. Spotting this, my brother immediately jumped onto the beach ball, and used it to get out of bounds, escaping without solving the puzzle I had meticulously designed.
Infuriating! But if I hadn't watched my brother play, I would never have known that it was possible to break the game in that way. I fixed the bug pretty quickly after that, and if you'd like to see for yourself, I've put a link to the game at the bottom of this entry.
Thanks for reading!
Play Daggertoss on Itch: https://damegev.itch.io/daggertoss