This was a jam packed week with playtest, workshops and development oh my! The team is continuing to chip away at our MVP and we keep testing along the way. We are also preparing for saturday playtestday and our own stealt-lovers playtest.
The Player Character
Let’s start with this week development. Since we only have one 3D modellers and character creation is so crucial to the Rifts universe, we got permission to purchase a model for our player character. (https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/the-bounty-hunter-8580bd4ce9994cbc9c90df2fd71fc1c2)
The model, however, need some tweaking. The lose fabric on the model needs to go because the animations that we are using cannot account from them. In addition, a clothe simulation would simply be out of scope. (We are also outsourcing animations from mixamo because we do not have an animator.)
Development
Inside the build we’ve made a lot of progress. One of the first things we did was incorporate some feedback we got about enemy detection. Players weren’t aware when the enemy had found them and were often surprised. We added in an exclaimation mark that show up when an enemy has started to notice you.
In additon, we had previously gotten some feedback that players don’t know which shadow are they will travel to when they use their shadow dash feature. Therefore, we have created arrows that will pop up ontop on the deep shadow they can travel to.
We have also made some progress on the outdoor scene. The temple is now textured and placed in this simulated desert scene. The player will walk up to the temple as they receive audio information about the mission and universe.
Playtesting
As mentioned in the last post, we had already put in placeholder puzzle in the entrance of the puzzle. This week, we took the time to fully flesh-out those puzzles.
When the player arrive at the temple, they are met with dialogue explaining the moon phase puzzle. They they have change the 5 panels to be the first 5 stages of the moon phase.
After that, there is some mroe dialogue talking about connection in Aztec culture. The player then has to use their Sixth Sense to match Aztec symbols that correlate to each other.
When we playtested with 12 more highschool students this week, we learned that the puzzle might be too difficult for players. If we want to keep the puzzles, then we need to introduce the moon phase and Aztec themes in a better way. Although not what we orginally wanted to get from the playtest, this feedback helped us figure out how to move forward.
Playtest to Refine Workshop
Our team attended the Playtest to Refine Workshop this week. The workshop is intended to prepare us for Playtest Day. At the workshop we got some key questions to consider before Playtest Day. What is our player experience goal? How will we test that?
Our player experience goal is to understand, anticipate and achieve. We want players to absorb information about the game situation, feel tension because of the obstacles, but in the end, have all the tools to overcome the level challenges. Considering this, we might shorten the experience we have the players test so that we they can experience that game loop.
Next Steps:
Next week, we will be arranging a playtest specifically for people that love stealth games. A lot of the feedback we’ve been getting from playtest has been from players that would prefer to not hide or sneak when playing. We believe that playtesting with experienced stealth game lovers will help us hone in on how to perfect this specific genre.
We will then take that advice into playtest day and hope to have a smooth test.