#7: Paper Prototyping and Playtesting

Art Progress

Our artists created a concept art for the narrative driving our game, which was a zombie student and Scotty helping to get coffee to save the student.

Game Design Iteration

Although from the previous weeks we had come up with a game design, we found that the team was still unclear on how the game worked and had doubts about the design. Here’s the game design document that we were working with.

To clarify the design, we created a rough paper prototype and tried acting out the player experience. One person roleplayed as the game logic and the other as the player. This helped us figure out flaws and holes with the current design.

Subsequently, we created a list of the things that we weren’t sure about for the design and tested those specific factors in each possible combination. We walked through the player experience internally to understand pain points, what was fun, and to discover unexpected learnings from having to actually act and talk it out.

At the end of the week, we had playested almost 12 different versions of our game, changing the orientation of the camera set-up, alternating having a flat table surface and having a LEGO baseboard as the interactive surface, and a variety of different game mechanics to determine what felt the most fun. Here’s all the variations we tried.

Our Paper Prototyping Feedback Board

Tech Progress

As part of prototyping, we also tested how it might work with a projected display on the boards.

To Be Continued…

After our internal playtesting, we realized we couldn’t move forward with the initial three-track idea because the gameplay was in conflict with some of the goals we had set at the beginning, and have since reiterated the design to also include the projected display we wanted from the start. More on this new design next week.

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