Playtesting—testing a new game for bugs and design flaws—is an essential part of the quality control process for any new game. Being a digital agency that specializes in VR experiences, playtesting is always a part of our process—especially because VR is such a new medium.
While Stupid Cupid is Shadow Factory’s third original game release, it’s our first full-fledged PC game, and thus playtesting has been an essential tool throughout the development of the game.
Playtesting isn’t just about problem-solving—it’s also about exploration and seeing what works best. Stupid Cupid originally started out at a wave-based game, where animals would come at the player in hordes and attack. It was through very early-stage playtesting among folks at the Shadow Factory office that the Stupid Cupid team discovered people preferred the open-space and animal-matching concept. This is also what gave birth to the animal personalities, which wouldn’t have worked with the original game concept.
We then brought in some fellow game developers to test the game, where we got great feedback on how cute the animals and their personalities turned out.
It’s not only positive feedback that comes out of playtesting, of course. While it may be a pain to have to go back and change fundamental parts of a game, when we playtest we already have the expectation that things that were obvious to us wouldn't be for others. It provides invaluable insight to game designers and prevents us from bringing a game to market that doesn’t work.
A little over a month before our planned Steam Early Access release date, we started a serious round of playtesting, bringing in people of various ages and gaming experience to test the game. We soon discovered a serious design flaw that we did not have with earlier versions of the unfinished game: people didn’t understand what to do or what the objectives were. Hints that we put in the game completely flew over players ’ heads. In addition, levels’ objectives were just too difficult for most players.
We immediately got to work redesigning instructions and objectives, with the goal of having a game that can be completely understood without our guidance ready by March 14, 2019!