Week 10 Covid Again - March 31st, 2023
Back from GDC, the whole team got sick from Covid. Despite being sick, we tried to work from home and make as much progress as possible for the Playtest Day on Saturday. We created a task list to prioritize finishing the tutorial level so people can have the complete experience when playtesting.
Focusing on the tutorial level, our programmers were able to implement the features we designed, including “Watch me” and “Follow me”. We also implemented new UI to guide the users through the experience. We also changed the background to a outdoor environment after discussing with the client. Currently, both the environment and model only serve as placeholders until Christine finishes the models.
In terms of art, Christine was able to finish texturing and retopologizing Eran’s model. To make sure that the Playtest Day will go smoothly. We delayed replacing the model until next week. Below are the updates on the model.
For Playtest Day, Xiaoying and Sherine were able to recover and facilitate it. We playtested the experience with 21 playtesters. We were happy to hear that a lot of people found the experience very relaxing. They often compared it to yoga, commenting on the relaxing music and visuals provided. However, we also listed a few problems we found in the playtest.
1. Problem gauging the ground level and left and right. Especially the legs.
2. Almost all playtesters followed both “Watch me” and “Follow me”. This was a surprising result. Even though we implemented fade-in and fade-out screen to tell people to watch first, then follow, almost all the playtesters followed both times. We plan to explain this better with voiceover so people can know what they are expected to do.
3. People struggled with “Hold”. We initially implemented this to make sure the users understand the position before moving on. However, with no feedback about how to correct themselves, this is not serving the purpose we hoped.
4. We need to implement captions so people can focus on the teaching.
5. It would be helpful to repeat the key voice over during follow me to remind the users what is important.
6. The app could benefit from having an introduction explaining to people what they will be doing before getting into it.
With all the learnings from the Playtest Day, we hope to improve the overall experience in the next few weeks before finishing the project.