Alien Plants & Variation Testing

Alien Plants & Variation thorns

Background and Goals

We have implemented the functions of obstacles and designed the models of obstacles:

• Randomly generated obstacle
• After character hitting
  • Reduce health
  • Reduce speed
  • Obstacle disappear
• Interaction with character
  • character can jump over the obstacles

This user test is aimed to improve our features and make changes to the model.

Process

To conduct our user testing we did the following:

• We invited users to play the game.
• We observed the actions they had when interacting with the obstacles.
• Record every important observations like "they like the design style of obstackles", "they found a bug on generating the obstacles randomly" etc.
• After they finish playing the game, we interviewed them with several questions regarding the obstacles.

Secondly, invite developers from the relevant project team to come to test:

• Inform them of relevant test items.
• Each tester conducts the test individually.
• Experience the game flow.
• Each person takes turns evaluating game features.

Key questions

• What's your opinions about the obstacles? (in any perspectives)
• What did you like/dislike about the obstacles?
• Do you have any advice to improve the obstacles?
• Are there any questions? Was there anything that was confusing about how the enmies worked?

Results

User 1:

• Observations:

  • The user enjoyed the game.
  • Because continuous jumping is possible, users can jump through the air all the time without touching the obstacles at all.
  • Obstacles are dense, if only the ordinary jump is difficult to jump over

• Thoughts:

  • The design and the animation of obstacles is good

• Likes/Dislikes:

  • Liked：The style of obstackles is amazing. And the speed reduction effect is obvious which increases the difficulty of the game
  • Disliked: The obstacles are too many, sometimes obstacles will be generated at the river, it is difficult to jump over.

• General Comments/Suggestions:

  • Modify the randomness of obstacle generation.
  • Add more types of obstacles.
  • Can add obstacles that will actively attack the character within a certain range.

User 2:

• Observations:

  • Users quickly get started without a tutorial, but don't know what the purpose of the game is.
  • Users feel that the obstacles are a bit small.

• Thoughts:

  • The animation loooks good.

• Likes/Dislikes:

  • Liked：The design of obstacles.
  • Disliked: Too less types of obstacles.

• General Comments/Suggestions:

  • Add more debuffs.
  • Add more kinds of obstacles like ufos in the sky.
  • Have a hint for different kinds of obstacles.

User 3:

• Observations:

  • Users didn’t understand the role of obstacles very well at first.
  • The user seems to like the appearance of the obstacle.

• Thoughts:

  • Users feel that the appearance of obstacles is very cool.
  • Obstacles have less effect.
  • Hope more other effects and obstacles.

• Likes/Dislikes:

  • Liked：The trigger animation of the obstacle looks good
  • Disliked: Obstacles have less effect.

• General Comments/Suggestions:

  • Add more effects.
  • Add more types of obstacles.
  • Add tutorial.

Summary

Most participants are able to play the game smoothly, but there will be some users who are not sure about the role of obstacles, and they are not sure what to do when they encounter obstacles. As one participant suggested, it might be useful to add a tutorial.

Almost all participants liked the obstacle design and animation. However, there are only two types of obstacles currently completed, and we should continue to add more types of obstacles.

As more than one participant mentioned in their responses, the current obstacles have only a few effects-slowing down and reducing blood. They hope to add more effects to increase the difficulty of the game.