Test Build and Narrative Usability testing (26th July)

Over the course of this week I have managed to get a test build ready, this build was simply to test if players could complete the game and how they found the navigation of the levels.

I told players to give me feedback on the level structure and how they found the navigation of the level. I was really happy with the feedback I received players as they seemed to really enjoy the game and how the story progressed in terms of the environment. The only two major concerns was that: some people thought there was too many AI in the second level and that some people struggled to know what to do at the very end of the game (where it was intended to for the player to blow down a door).

To fix these issues I went through the second level and took out some of the AI, giving the player a little more breathing room and allowing for the combat encounters to have more meaning. Additionally with people not knowing they needed to blow open the door at the end, to sort this I added huge cracks into the door with the addition of putting the RPG right in the front of the door, I will potentially add in some voice trigger as well that indicates that the main antagonist is behind the door, this should give the player a clear indication that they need to blow open the door.

The only other item that was bought up in my testing, was that some of the testers wanted to know why the bullets were so big. This was a conscious design decision, simply to give the player more visual guidance on where they were being attacked from.

Overall this feedback has been really useful in particular knowing that people liked the environmental changes throughout the level and additionally knowing the issues they had with finishing the game.

Narrative Usability Testing:

Narrative Usability Testing is a method commonly used by big budget AAA developers, it is a method used to easily test a games narrative by simply writing it down along with events that are happening in the game to test whether people are interested with the narrative that has been pitched.

To conduct my narrative usability testing, I would tell my tester what the purpose of the test was and then discuss with them afterwards about their thoughts on the narrative.

What’s my narrative so far:

What the player will be doing during the game:

Choices the player is given:

These are the slides that I pitched to my testers, giving a detailed account of what they will be doing in the game along with detailing the importance of their decisions in the game.

The feedback I received from testers was similar to my own thoughts, they liked the morality of the narrative i.e. making a story that wasn’t black and white and which had some depth to the enemies. Though when it came to the idea that there had to be nukes involved they perceived it as a bit generic. I was very happy with this feedback as their reviews and opinions on the storyline aligned with my own.

Overall the narrative is the key aspect of the game that I am looking at right now, I think it will be important to take some time to develop the story and really brainstorm ideas. Alongside this, researching real life events will be really important when it comes to fine tuning a narrative for this game. As my goal with this project is to showcase my level design skills in particular environmental story telling, it is important that the narrative suits the environment that I have made and that it is able to help build the world that I am trying to immerse the players in.

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