Generally at Troll we conduct our earliest prototype testing in-office, get a few family & friends in and play about until we get something we all enjoy. With DogGunnit we knew we had a fun idea but it was still a bit all over the place. We also had a deadline so to really pin it down we decided this time to use a game testing service.
We used Testify to make sure we would get more honest, critical feedback that could keep up with our speedy dev time. It ended up being even more useful than we expected.
The Testify Process
Testify send your game to a bunch of testers, we get back a bunch of videos of them playing our game as well as the audio from the test sessions. You can add a survey that testers see upon completing the demo. We ran 3 sessions altogether, after 1 week of development, after 2 weeks and after 3 weeks.
The First Test
This allowed us to get some A/B testing of 2 different layouts:
A single screen mode where one player controls both the driving & aiming/shooting
A split screen mode for local co-op play where one player drives & another player aims/shoots.
The level was a basic arena and the test was about finding out if the car handled well rather than testing any actual gameplay. While all the feedback came back positive the single screen version came out on top.
Positives
Everyone enjoyed the car handling, driving, jumping and boosting.
We also got a few requests for dogs! The name DogGunnit gave away that they should have been in there; we just had it scheduled for week 2!
Negatives
The camera was a bit too jittery for some and the aiming needed tightened up a lot!
What I was most surprised about from the first test session was how long people were willing to drive around just testing out car controls, loads of the testers made suggestions about what they’d like to see in the game, modes, weapons, level and mission ideas. It almost felt like having a really solid back up team for the first few weeks, Testify have some great testers.
Onto the Second Test
This time it was only the single screen version sent up for testing, we added:
3 distinct areas to the level
Gameplay goals to test the flow of the game
coins to collect
boost rings to stunt jump through
Stabilised the camera and changed the weight of the car
We got the dog in, yay!
For such seemingly small changes the difference in feedback was really big. We managed to get a lot of the same testers returning and hearing the reaction to how far the game had progressed in 1 week was so encouraging.
Positives
The changes we made got the reactions we were hoping for, we knew we were on the right track.
Players were happy enough to drive around playing with the same controls over and over with none of them ever expressing being bored with it.
Amount of destruction you would be able to cause in the game seemed to really capture the players’ imagination.
The best bit about Testify in this stage was discovering Testify events, we specify something we want to track – like when the boost rings were activated – and we can view just those events in our Testify dashboard. It’s sooooo handy. The survey results are invaluable too, we even use them to add weight to design issues in the office, with everyone referencing the tester that had agreed with their particular point many times.
Negatives
While no big negatives came from the second stage we did have some design concerns in office, mainly about the car not being heavy enough or big enough, and the aiming wasn’t very fun. We knew we had 1 week before our final Testify sessions, not a lot of time for a lot of changes yet we decided to do it anyway.
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