Hi all!
Once again, members of the Arctic Theory team jumped into the Project Existence Testing Environment late last week for a new playtest adventure. We have a brief update below.
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MARCH 16, 2023 PLAYEST
GOAL / DESCRIPTION
Just as last week, this playtest was designed with an emphasis on player experience, focused on the group endeavor of rebuilding a satellite dish (a "monument") in the game world.
Utilizing feedback from the last playtest and most of the same participants, we wanted to see how they would react to changes made based off of said feedback. Most importantly, we wanted to gauge if players felt more like they were contributing to a common goal as a cooperative group, or if there was still a slight disconnect in that experience.
RESULTS
As last time, the playtest was largely well-received, with participants having a stronger sense of what to do. We also had a small handful of new players that were able to get a grasp on the experience faster, though it inarguably helped to have the previous playtest group to lean on. It will be interesting having a fully new group of participants jump in for future playtests to offer fresh insights on how intuitive tasks and collaborative opportunities are.
Speaking of, you can get updates on when we'll be holding future Playtests on the Project Existence Discord. We'd love to have enough new folks jump in to walk them through an experience with a fresh set of eyes. Don't be a stranger, ping us there any time and let us know you want to play!
Finally, here is a short snippet of in-game video with one of our players exploring the wilderness in search of a promising spot to begin harvesting wood for the satellite dish project:
ANALYTICS
Below is a bit of data collected from the most recent playtest:
TEAM RETROSPECTIVE / GAMEPLAY FEEDBACK
After the playtest we shared a questionnaire featuring a number of topics, including whether or not players understood the main objective, the building of an outpost, harvesting, how to send resources to the monument, ease of controlling the character, whether they felt they contributed to a shared goal with other players and finally, if they were enticed to play future builds.
It was valuable and mostly positive data, but we're aware there is still work to be done.
OUTRO
Our next playtest will occur on 5/4/23 at 1:15 GMT. Again, those interested are more than welcome to join us and participate.
We have a few goals for this next playtest, including:
- Adding a new resource (iron) via the rocks scattered around the world
- Adding factory units that transform raw resources into materials to use for monument construction
- Adding the ability to remove buildings
- Adding a power system for outposts (will be detailed in next Dev Blog)
- Adding ability to join other player's outpost in addition to your established outpost
- Showing founder and joined members in outpost UI
- Adding a decay function to buildings that are outside of an outpost area (after outpost is destroyed)
- Iterating on the intro, and adjusting tone
- General UI polish, bug fixes
Keep an eye out for our next update. As always, we appreciate your contributions, and hope you'll join us on our game development adventure!
- Arctic Theory