Final Playtest Feedback
UI
Pro: Player understand player's health, boss's health, boss's shield correctly
Con: Some players don't know the mechanism of energy bar recovery (related to previous game experience)
Con: the invisible hint of environment rocks misleading player
Con: Most players don't want to read text
Con: Wall's glitch when wall rotate
Con: Most players don't know they have to interact with NPC at first ( interact hint should show at first )
Game Design
Pro: most players find the View Change skill interesting
Pro: most players will frequently use the View Change skill
Pro: most players will frequently use View Change to find the boss's back
Pro: first few levels help players form the habit of using rotation frequently
Pro: Player understand boss's bugs clearly through Fredman's dialog & visual expression
Pro: Sounds and Arts style feels good. Boss fight music should be more intensive
Con: Some players don't know what to do at combat level
Con: Left enemy num reminder don't fit in the game
Con: Some players can't find the door to the next level
Con: players don't understand the difference between blue & red bullets
Con: Pressure Plate Puzzle player don't understand the goal of the puzzle, can't see pressure plate clearly
Con: Pressure Plate better can unlock the door when player stand on it (teaching)
Con: If there are the different mechanisms of the pushable boxes, there should be differences in their visual appearance
Con: there is no huge difference between boss front & boss back
Con: Dialog during combat might break a player's immersion. (Discussion: QTE vs. Immersive: system: https://www.zhihu.com/question/57449141/answer/153266482 )
Lessons I learned
1. Project Management
Use project management tools (Trello) as early as possible.
Important document & usage
Game Design document: general, levels, combat, story...
Game Dev Diary: Common document for everyone to record what their do today. It would be better to have only PM or Producer write this document.
Weekly Report: What you have done? What you are going to do.
Minutes of Meeting: Effective Meeting Rules ( https://www.feishu.cn/hc/zh-CN/articles/360049067374 All members -> Peer Group Discussion)
Use discord with different channels
Have DailyBuild/WeeklyBuild as early as possible
Internal playtest when new features come out
2. Game Design
The new mechanism always seems awesome at first. But also follow the creative process: Seems awesome -> Seems tricky -> It's shit -> I'm shit -> It works somehow -> It's great
You need time to polish your Game from sucks to great! (only if you are in the right direction.
If you started with a novel mechanism, it's better to consider story and aesthetics ASAP, so you won't waste your artist's time creating useless artwork.
A new mechanism always needs lots of effort to make a tutorial.
It's safer to build your game based on already nice gameplay.
But always try to create new staff to bring new game experiences to players!
If you build your game based on existing gameplay, please take "user habit" into account. They will play your game using their old habits.
Your player usually has a large variance in their skills. Try to build your level that rookies can pass and experienced player can show off their skills.
It's one of game designers' duties to find out the cheapest way to achieve the best game experience.
It takes a lot of time to make your AI feel smart, different, and challenging.
The Player's weapon is better to be inside the collider of the player, or there might be cases that the player can shoot enemies behind the cover but enemies can't.
3. Programming
New Skills I get in this project:
Use customized Material and line shader to create Laser Attack; A* pathfinding; FMOD cooperate with sound designers;
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