Raccoon Game: Playtesting Results

4/18/2021
CS 4455: Spring 2021
Team Trash Pandas
Nicole Harris, Youngho Lim, Nicholas Killen, Tyler Scaramastro, and Tienzheng Zheng

1. Design Questions

During our playtesting sessions our team sought to analyze and receive feedback for our game
within the following categories:
● Impression - What was the player’s overall impression of the game?
● Clarity
○ Was the player able to figure out the object of the game without difficulty?
○ Did the player experience confusion while playing the game? With which parts?
● Movement - Did the movement feel good to the player? Was it intuitive? Was it fun?
● Key mappings - Were the key mappings intuitive to the player?
● Fair
○ Was the difficulty curve fair to the player?
○ Was the AI fair to the player?
● Fun - Did the player have fun when playing our game?
● Problem Areas
○ What was missing from our game?
○ What kind of changes does the player think we need to make to our game?
● Other - Does the player have any remaining comments about the game?

2. Approach to Design Questions and Playtest methods

To playtest our game, we had people play the game while thinking out loud about how the game
felt to play, and what they thought about the game. We gave users 30 minutes to play the game,
and after playing the game and saying what they thought playing it, the users completed a short
survey containing the questions outlined below.

After Gameplay Interview Questions:

1. What are your overall impressions of the game?
2. What does the objective of the game appear to be?
3. How do you feel moving the character around? Is the movement smooth or does it feel
like it needs a lot of refinement?
4. Do the key mappings for movement seem feasible?
5. Was there anything confusing about this level? (Did you know where to go, how to
proceed to the next level, etc.)
6. Did this level feel fair?
7. Does the AI in the game feel fair/fun to play against?
8. What is missing from this game?

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 9. What are some possible changes you’d make to the game?
10. Are there any other comments you have for us?

We decided on using these questions because they are broad questions that leave a lot
of room for players to add their own comments while they answer the questions. These
questions are based on the game feel of our game, as well as questions about playability, fun,
fairness, and AI design. With these questions, we feel we covered everything our game could
improve on and we allowed play testers to go in depth with their responses and opinions on the
game.

3. Results Summary and Analysis

In broad strokes, the results show that all of the playtesters were confused as to what to
do in the game. Initially, we found that they had trouble differentiating what were house
decorations and what was the environment. Players tended to spend a lot of the allotted time
mindlessly wandering around, hoping to find decorations. After identifying this bottleneck, we
created a new game build where the collectibles were highlighted in yellow in order to help
identify other playtest issues. With the new build, we were able to identify that even with the
indication of the collectibles, the playtesters still had trouble figuring out when they were done
with a level (and more broadly, what the goal of each level was), and where to go after each
level. Plyatesters also uncovered some smaller (but just as important) issues such as a high
sensitivity on the camera, the conflict between moving the character and camera with A and D
and moving only the camera with the left and right arrow keys, and the lack of clarity on the
controls.
Moreover, throughout the playtests multiple bugs were identified; a lot of them had to do
with unintended/incorrect functionality (double/multi jump, cars becoming out of alignment, items
reappearing on a scene load even after collecting, hearts refilling on a scene load), while other
bugs had to do with clips through the floor and missing functionality (UI not showing certain
item).
The main reason for these clarity issues is that as the game developers, we know what
to do, how to play, and where to go, but for players playing the game for the first time, they know
none of that. When we added a feature to the game, there was an understanding on how to
play, and thus how to get to that feature. But for players, they don’t have that foundational
knowledge, so they may never get to that new feature. With that said, going forward, we need to
be cognizant of the player’s perspective and knowledge of the game, or a lack thereof, and keep
that in mind when fine tuning the game, even if we as the developers know how to play very
well.

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3.1 Visualization of Results

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Key Results

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4. Action Items/Future Work

Cole
● Add visual for blocking doors in the junkyard before they can be entered (either close
them or another type of visual)
● Add more pages to NPC’s dialogue including objects for the game and hints
○ Options: “You currently have collected _/16 furniture items.
■ “ _/3 remain in the junkyard, get to looking!”
■ “Furniture items you can collect are highlighted in yellow. You can pick
them up by pressing ‘E’!”
■ “You can put the furniture items you’ve collected into your house. Just
turn around and go right in!”
○ Fix anchoring on dialog screen
Nicole
● Smooth player’s animations
● Player SFX
○ Death and Game over screen
○ Hurt
● Fix double jumping bug
● Lives after game over should reset

Angelo
● Add simple control tutorial at the beginning of the game
● Beautify UI screens
● Simple fading loading/transition screen
● Make sure collected items don’t reappear
● Credits

Youngho
● Add SFX and VFX for items that can be picked up
○ Ex. soft twinkling sound effect when you get close
● Add models for food
● Increase size of manhole trap in city
● Add narrative cohesion

Tyler
● Root Motion for AI
● Decrease range and speed for dodgeball throwing AI, throw less often, make sure
dodgeballs are working correctly so that they don’t go through objects
● Add more walking enemies so there’s more to pay attention to
● Move the starting position of the walking AI so it has a higher chance of crossing paths
with the player

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Sound credits:
Freesound - "PickupBook4.wav" by jomse
Freesound - "DogYelp.wav" by TobiasKosmos
Freesound - "health_1.wav" by zandernoriega
Freesound - "Ambience, London Street, A.wav" by InspectorJ
Freesound - "Cicada, Close, A.wav" by InspectorJ

Main Theme - Nintendogs - YouTube

Game Over - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild OST - YouTube