Unfortunately I was unable to attend the B practical of week 7 so I organised some students to help me out in a bit of free time. I gathered a group of 5 students with a variety of backgrounds and degrees so as to get as diverse a feedback I possibly could. What follows is a summary of their responses to my follow-up interview questions.
Which version of the game did you like best and why?
All those interviewed said that they preferred the game variant which required a pacman to capture a minimum of 2 sides in order to capture the square. It was unanimous in that they all said it was due to the fact that the games went on a bit longer. Only requiring 1 side was essentially too quick and didn't leave enough game time. I found this unsurprising as I had come to the same conclusion by myself but I wanted to make sure that it was a general consensus. It will however be interesting to see how everyone feels once the controller becomes more physical. We'll see if they want the games going longer then haha.
When it came to starting positions though they were a bit torn. None of them really liked position 1 due to the players starting too far apart. It made each player's run too easy (especially with 1-capture). When it came to the other 2 positions though they didn't really know which to choose from. 3/5 said they probably preferred the more central one but couldn't really describe why they thought it was better than the other one. The one thing they all did agree on though was the fact that players should definitely start very close to each other as it really opened up the game a lot more. They all agreed that this made the game more exciting. This surprised me. I thought that the players starting further apart would be better. It seems I was wrong.
What did you like about the game concepts?
Everyone said that they liked the idea of 'capturing' squares. One person said "It's a fresh take on something that everyone knows" which is great, but that's just about the only real piece of useful feedback I was able to get from this question. They didn't mention the way players move or anything else which leads me directly to the next question.
What didn't you like about the game concepts?
Here I got some pretty brutal but pretty useful feedback. No-one really liked the way players were controlled on the keyboard. They didn't really mind having to tap the key to move forward (although they said they would prefer not having to do that), but the thing they really didn't like was having to change direction by 'turning left ' or 'turning right'. They found it confusing because if you're heading down and want to start going right across the screen, you have to turn left.
I originally designed the controls with a physical controller in mind. So that when you're running there would be fewer pads necessary. Even when I asked them to consider the practicalities of a more physical 'floor-pad' style controller they were still unsure if it would be ideal. The problem, as they said, would still be there. So I daresay I'll have to rework the next prototype for a simpler controller.
What would you add to make the game better?
This question made it far more interesting. I got many different suggestions. Mostly related to the original Pacman game, like having ghosts that could chase you around and force you to change your route. The four people who suggested that idea said it would make the game more interesting. One of the four went even further by suggesting making the game more like mario kart. Allowing players to fire missiles/special items around that have a negative effect on the other player. I thought that idea was pretty interesting and would really like to have a go at implementing that. I actually went back and asked the other 4 people what they thought of the Mario Kart style idea. They loved it. Basically said Mario Kart is such an exciting game because other players can affect you. So I think this is something I will definitely have to look at doing this.
No comments:
Post a Comment