Group Post about Playtest Feedback

Playtest Notes: Multiple playtesters felt they were getting "stuck" when running into a wall. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that adding a physics material with no friction fixes this issue. Playtesters thought the lighting was too dark, so I placed more lights so it is easier to see. It was also difficult for playtesters to find the hints, so i made them more obvious and visible. Beautiful Corner Notes: Unity can only have 3 lights affecting an asset. This constraint was causing lighting issues in our scenes because we were using large and complicated meshes for our wall layouts, made in probuilder. To remedy this, the wall layouts were exported as .objs and split into smaller pieces in Maya so that the lighting can render better. -Ali Saleemi, Scripter

My first playtester mentioned the difficulty with seeing the actual clues in the navigation in order to figure out the order of the code to leave the room. The maze was also extremely dark to see and made it extremely difficult to navigate. The maze’s objective is to find 3 subvalves to turn off 3 subpipes to reach the main valve and access the loading bay. There’s no clear indicator that a valve has been turned, the sound effect is covered by the background music and an animation is needed. Throughout the entire game it’s also not clear what the objectives are, especially in the maze. There could be a UI text saying what the objective is in each room, or a sound or voice-over doing that. Between the first and second playtest I quickly just added a point light on the player to make the environment not as dark and to progress the playtesters even further. My second playtester also suggested having a UI element that explains the objectives, and also mentioned that the interaction with the navigation terminal was wonky. They also suggested adding landmarks in the maze since the walls look pretty much the same and the colors blend extensively. -Nevin Portillo, Artist

Feedback from our playtest was very helpful. Fortunately, a lot of people liked our space aesthetic and accompanying sound design. Several people commented positively on the background music, which made me happy. One critique I got was that the sound in some areas was too quiet, like when turning the valve, so I have since increased it. Going forward, I have a few ideas to polish the sound further by adding more effects and ambient sounds. One thing I would like to implement is a sound for when the player is typing in the code. As they type, they hear a little boop each time they enter a number as if they are pressing on a keypad. Additionally, I'd like to tweak the electric water sound as I feel it is a little too jarring right now, especially on loop. -Jasmine Mitchell, Sound Designer