Testing the 3rd Build
Last week we made new user tests, focused on checking the new UI, pacing, tutorial of mechanics and general layout of the levels was working. Gladly for us we succeeded on many of these aspects and for the ones that still need work, we already have some ideas on how to proceed.
For this build my partner worked on simplifying the UI and removing its elements that didn’t work, this was pleasantly as complete success. The first change was replacing the old way in which we communicated the rhythm of the music. The old UI wasn’t clear or pretty, so my partner had the idea of adding a small UI element with an animation on the individual tiles to communicate the rhythm on each one. This allows the player to see what rhythm they should follow by just looking at their character instead of having to move their sight. Also, it had the advantage of calling more attention to it when the ½ tempo tile appeared. This new tile immediately made the testers feel a sense of urgency and speed, communicating something we have had problems explaining to players from day 1. Finally, this reduced the noise and clñutetr from the screen which was one of our aims.
Our second large success was with the pacing as players felt engaged learning new mechanics, without getting bored or frustrated at any time. This worked together with the improved tutorialization as everything that the levels presented, the players understood without the need of explanation text or from us talking to the player. This gave the game a very nice sense of flow and contrasted heavily to the old levels. Now the last two levels, which I decided to use as I thought they were still good, don’t feel up to standards when played after the new ones. I will start working this week to replace these two levels.
Finally, let's talk about the new level’s layout. As it could be inferred from the previous paragraph, in general the layout of the levels was very well received and can even be considered an overall improvement from the previous levels. Up to level 4 there weren’t any criticisms from the players nor any we could notice, but on level 5 where the levels start getting bigger we found some opportunities for improvement. To start with, it made us realize that when the maps get larger it becomes hard for the players to know where they can and can’t go. Though I plan on improving the blocking on the levels, we believe that improving the tileset that delimits where the player can walk will fix most of the issue.
The next opportunity for improvement I observed was on specific elements in the level that failed to telegraph the player where they can go. One example is the ending hallway, here the large block used to prevent the players from getting distracted by observing too many elements at once from the beginning is still blocking enough of the ending path for most players to not notice it.
Beyond this we noticed some other smaller changes that we could make like linking the buttons with the doors these open by adding a color identifier that only that pair shares.
I will continue working on the the 2 levels that we are missing and on publishing what we already have.
