This week was probably by far the most interesting week seeing our game in action among the two biggest play tests and demo we had for our game. Not to mention our final presentations are this Monday, 6th May.
MetaVerse ModSquad Play Test
We coordinated with the company to organize a play test for us in San Francisco. This was our first big play test with a large coordinated audience with over 50 people ended up playing the game. We had a good strategy going into the play test. We iterated on our UI feedback loop after Softs to make the feedback much simpler and consistent between the three stages of the game. The core changes we made to the feedback loop included using stars to first build up power and then using the same star to capture enemy territory. This was already being done behind screens but with this iteration we tried to make this key aspect of the game more evident on screen. For the virus stage we had a similar strategy in place to destroy the virus pieces using stars but we were unfortunately not able to achieve this change before our play test. For the feedback we organized a long set of questions for the players to fill after the play test which would give us a good understanding of the how the players perceive the game. The entire results for the 71 responses we got on this form can be accessed at this link. Also the complete video from the play test is available here.
BVW Festival Demo
We also prepared simultaneously for our game demo at the BVW Spring Festival. We made further improvements to the game for the visual feedback. The stars shoot from the territory indicator and after landing on the boundary eliminate the enemy territory to clear of certain part of the land which can then be easily occupied. Also for the virus stage a major change in the visual feedback now is the stars shoot at different parts of the virus territory and this visually eliminates that section of the virus. This clearly sends out the message to the players that they need stars to get rid of the virus. Also we made numerous other improvements to balance the pacing and the interest curve. The number of newspapers has been reduced since they stall the game. Instead the news feed at the bottom is used to send out the message to the players. We changed the look and feel of the UFO which looks much more deadly and does a lot more damage. Our demo was scheduled for 8:30 pm in the RPIS which meant we had to step up our marketing efforts for ensuring we get a good turnaround for the game. For this the entire team was on marketing rounds during the entire festival encouraging guests and students alike to install our application on their devices from the marketplace and come down for the game. This probably helped us a lot in getting more than 40-50 players playing the game at the same time. We got some good amount of feedback from Drew and other industry guests based on their experience of the game and we are working towards making our client application much more refined. The entire video for the game demo is available here.
Faculty Meeting
The team met with Drew and Jess on Friday to go over our play test the night before at the Festival. We were also joined by Tim from Zynga who had the chance to play our game as well. Below are the highlights –
- Players confused from the client UI on the mobile since the bars keep jumping up and down at multiple level so it was not clear as to where should the players aim for keeping the bar.
- Most players did not see the “Be Quite” news feed for the UFO since it is at the very bottom of the screen and pretty much kept singing even when the UFO was there.
- MC on stage would have to own the stage otherwise it would be an uncoordinated experience and players would not know what is going on.
- Much more vibrant use of audio clues to grab players attention (such as UFO coming in or a news feed cropping up on screen)
- Iteration of the game was much more powerful but at the same time tiring.
- There could be game tips or Pro tips to help players along the way.
- Overall the concept is really fun and interesting.
Finals Preparation
The team is presenting on the 6th of May and we are preparing hard this weekend for our upcoming presentation. The work in progress copy of the presentation can be found on google drive. More details about the presentation to follow next week.
That’s it from this week, see you all next time.
Mayank Grover