Platformer Prototype: Playtesting Results

25/03/25 Letting people playtest my prototype!

Hello! Over the course of the last few days, I've been allowing people to playtest my games. I then made them fill out a survey after they were done in order to visualise their feedback. Furthermore, I had found a diverse collection of people to playtest my game with varied experience with gaming.

Here are the survey results. Bellow I will be commenting on them.

Calvin plays a lot of games so he would be considered an experienced playtester. He seemed to enjoy my game a lot however his worded feedback was very useful. He suggested that the rate of the fish being deployed should be worked on. I agree, it was very janky, and all the fish jump out all at once which would make the game too difficult and repetitive. he also suggested that i were to add power-ups/speed boosts as power ups. I'm not exactly sure how to add this while also sticking to the game's aesthetics. However, if I were to fully flesh out this game, that would be a good thing to add as it was a part of my original pitch.

Taylor was my second playtester, she plays a moderate amount of video games. Her feedback was more varied in the non-written portion. An ongoing theme is people mentioning that the game doesn't flow very well, and that the gameplay isn't very satisfying however people really liked replaying the game just to see if they could do better. She suggested that I was to add mobile compatibility which is entirely possible and helpful to bringing in a whole different range of players. They also mentioned that the collision mechanics were not ideal so to fix this I could edit the collision markers to make the detection system better. For the new ideas section she suggested that because my game is based off of "Bunny Hop" from "Rythm Tengoku" I could add an only perfect mode. I do not think I'd want to do that because then my game will be too similar, instead id want to add a combo mechanic that would give the players extra points if they hit the fish in a certain time succession. 

My friend Elijah playtested my game next. It's important to note that he is considered a "naive playtester" as he is not very experienced in video games. As it can be observed he did not take this survey seriously and the results are not as helpful. however, judging by watching him play and the first set of questions. he did not like how he couldn't figure out the mechanics immediately which ruined his enjoyment in playing the game, this in turn, caused him to hate replaying the game. He was alright with the controls once he managed to understand it.

Meika was the last person to playtest my game. She plays video games occasionally, but she's not exactly experienced, especially with the platformer genre so she is also a naive playtester. She also didn't think my game flowed very well. She thought that the mechanics worked nicely however i could improve my entity generation as there were too many fish and it made it difficult for her to play. She also suggested a new mechanic where seagulls can momentarily swoop down from above and carry the player for a short distance for extra points which I think is a great idea. 

It can be concluded that the playtesters generally enjoyed the concept, mechanics and controls of the game however there is a lot of room for improvement. These can include the ideas they had suggested to add like the sea gulls and power ups or improving and refining on current mechanics.

Thats all for today, Kier signing out.