Design Sprint: 7

Overview

• Playtesting feedback review
• Design iteration and planning next steps

Trouble Arises…

Unfortunately, from the playtesting session, two of our team members tested positive for Covid-19; as such, the remainder of this sprint was held remotely.

Playtesting Feedback

Our main focus at the beginning of the week was to review all the playtesting data collected from the previous weekend and compile a prioritized list of concerns to address.

Overall, our playtesters provided strong positive feedback for the game, especially with regards to its theming and environment. Many found the gameplay mechanics interesting, and felt that making correct categorizations was very rewarding. 

On the flip side, some of the mechanics were still confusing – Selectors especially had a tough time understanding what their main mechanics were, and many did not know how to pan the camera or use markers. Additionally, with the current structure of the neighborhoods, the Explorer would often have difficulty in orienting themselves to the space and would not be able to locate the exit or other houses.

There were also many imbalances in the gameplay: if an Explorer was much faster than the Selector, the Selector would be overwhelmed with selection screens and have very little opportunity to interact with the world. Alternatively, if the Selector was much faster, the Explorer felt burdened to immediately find another house.

The main drawback from the playtesting was that Explorers did not know there was a strategy to be learned, and instead opted to search the neighborhoods exhaustively. The UI bubble being a cue towards house-based distribution was missed by most players, and some were not looking for a cue at all. 

Programming Updates

As we transitioned into the later half of our semester, our focus now shifted towards ensuring our clients are able to more easily conduct research with our game. One of the major changes that occurred starting with this sprint was redesigning the game to have a host player. This would ensure that one host (the researcher) would be able to control all the configuration & store all the logged data for a round on a separate machine, rather than having that responsibility fall on one of the two player machines.

Additionally, more logging features were added into the game to ensure that a JSON log file would be saved after each game session to be parsed and analyzed.

Client Meeting + Review

After condensing our feedback and a prioritized list of potential solutions, we presented them to the client during our weekly meeting. We first conducted a playthrough with the clients, then held a discussion regarding the collected feedback. Our discussion helped us prioritize our plans for the upcoming weeks:

• Concrete advice towards onboarding through a goal and game mechanics screen within a game, along with an offline onboarding session to be conducted by the researchers during their studies. The goals screen would also be used to convey that an optimal strategy exists outside of guessing/exhaustive search
• Adding penalty traps within the world to increase difficulty of navigation
• Kicking off design decisions for integrating AI agents, specifically with what forms of input/output need to be provided
• Solidifying the requirements for a Candy Generator deliverable to be provided to the client to generate customizable visual stimuli
• Redesigning the world space to have a central area to make navigation/orientation easier for the Explorer

Next Week, Maybe… 

As our team continues recovering from Covid, we will continue making progress on our prototype based on the feedback from our client.