Sprint 3

Another sprint, another build, and so much more work to go, but the game is making strides! The second build had a lot more level space and assets, there was gunplay that was fleshed out with sound and VFX, and we got a lot of good feedback on controls. Overall I’m really proud of my team for all the work they’ve put into the game and making it look and play well but there’s still a lot of work to do going forward. For now, let’s check out some of the playtest feedback.

Playtest Results: Controls

Switching up the control scheme I changed things around so that the player would actually jump on space (which was highly requested), and moving around things like the button for grenades and melee ended up resonating with the playtesters rather well. However, it wasn’t quite as strong as I would’ve hoped. We only ended up changing one person’s mind from “Disagree” over to “Agree” statistically, which is still good but not what I’d hoped with so many changes. I think one reason this stat may be suffering is that there’s no tutorial of any kind in the game as it stands. We want one, we need one, but it’s just not there right now. If we had a tutorial that showed the player all the actions they’d be taking, I think that would help give more context to this question for playtesters.

Playtest Results: Objectives

This, this went a whole lot better the second time around than the first. One thing I changed was adding a UI text prompt that permanently stayed up telling the player their objective, while also showing them a picture of what they were supposed to be collecting. Player’s wanted to just play the game, not wait around at the beginning and read a prompt. Having the perpetual prompt meant that once the players were out of zombies or looking for direction, they had a place to look and read what they were supposed to be doing. Hopefully in the future this will be handled by some voice-over prompts along with a fleshed out tutorial, but I was happy to see that this one change made such a difference in players being able to actually win the game.

Gameplay

Adding in sound and visuals to the weapons firing I think really help to make the game feel like a game and not just a prototype. It feels like the weapons are complete, more or less, and that helps cement the idea of what the game is becoming and where we can go with it. Something I added at the last minute was ammunition pickups. I did this because the size of the level had dramatically increased from the last time we made a build, and so I didn’t want players to have to run around with no ammo for most of their playtime. What I put on the map may have been more plentiful than what I’d like, but it kept players engaged and playing, and avoided awkward moments of feeling like there was nothing to do. As we continue onto the next build, I’ll be looking to really sure up a solid loop for the players to play in so we can really see how players like the feeling of going into a mission, playing, finishing and getting rewarded, and going back into it. Right now the game is very skin deep. There’s some visuals, there’s some enemies, and there’s an end, but the depth of the gameplay is not there. There aren’t a lot of questions or situations that the player has to mull over, or things that change up how the player has to play the game. I think these will be crucial for the final game to feel really fun outside of the general lizard brain fun of shoot zombies with loud boom stick.

Inventory and Weight

I should’ve known as soon as I had weight/item management that affected player ability that I’d have to add an inventory system. I was resistant to the idea for a while because it didn’t fit in with the vision I had for the game as an action title. However, if picking something up makes a player worse, then they’ll want to put it back down and if there are different items that have different values, they’re going to want to pick what they pick up and what they put down. So, I’m going to be designing out what that inventory UI will look like and how we want it to act in-game. I know that this will slow down the gameplay a bit, and I also know that it will remove a bit of tension as the player is navigating through a UI screen rather than being absorbed into the game screen. I’m hoping to try and mitigate how much the player is taken out of the experience of the game, while still providing an intuitive, functional inventory management system. Ideally I’d like to have some sort of animation of the player getting into their backpack before the menu pops up, as I think that would really help hold onto that immersion, but without a dedicated animator that may be difficult for this project.