Team 1 Evaluation

Sprint 4 Post User Test Evaluation

After completion of user test 1, it is evident that the game is, in fairness, playable, but not quite yet enjoyable. Some key points that were mentioned by the users are:

• The game is too difficult from the beginning.
• There is an imbalance of power up spawns.
• Some animations were inconsistent or did not play at all.
• The game causes too much stress rather than enjoyment and determination.

In task 1 users were given two minutes to freely play the game. The results from this provided a general basis of the game’s overall quality. For the most part, user’s were satisfied with the current features of the game. Most user’s found difficulty in throwing the spear at the wall in the tutorial section at first, but eventually got the hang of it. It is possible that the tutorial needs to be simpler just to achieve the goal of informing the user that this functionality exists. It can be proposed that the player should not take any damage in the tutorial section and the score should not increase.

Task 2 asked the users to kill 10 enemies with the spear. Evidently, no users were able to complete this, and most took 10 or more attempts before ending the task. A few things can be gathered from this. Firstly, there may not be enough spear power ups available to the user. Secondly, the enemy movements may be too sporadic and rapid for a non-aimable spear. Thirdly, the platform design may force the player to focus on traversal and obstacle avoidance rather than trying to kill enemies along the way. Lastly, there needs to be an improved balance between spear availability, number of enemies and player paths for an effective gameflow.

Users were tasked to use only the shield power up and get as far as possible in task 3. The main issue for users in this task was the lack of shields available. This leads to the suggestion that it may be useful to present all power ups in the tutorial section so the user may try all power ups. Also, the tutorial should really be its own section that can be chosen to be played from a menu. After this task, it was clear that the player has a high dependency on power ups. There is a slight feeling that this is a deterrence to the original concept of an endless runner.

In task 4, it was requested that users find at least 4 unique ways to die. This task was easily completed by users. Evidently, there are a high number of ways the player can die. This is one significant factor that affects the difficulty of the game, more specifically making it harder. A solution to this would be to lower the damage obstacles and enemies deal at early stages of the game.

The final task got the users to beat their current high score within 3 attempts. Comically, most players just stood still as the score increased regardless. A simple solution to this is to make the score distance based rather than time based. This task solidified the supposition of the game’s high difficulty as users either exploited the increase in score while standing or did not surpass their highscore.

In conclusion, based on user feedback, the game has not yet achieved its emotional goals. A significant limitation to this game was the time constraint of development within 10 weeks. A considerable amount of features and quality itself were sacrificed to ensure completion. Although, most features do indeed have commendable functionality. It can be said that the game is in a state ready for high volume testing and has a strong base for future improvements.