Ask playtesters why

It’s often easy to assume why a playtester does something and how you could fix it. But it could be useful to take a step back and ask the playtester why. You might find some presumptions you didn’t expect.

When someone would explain a circle behavior to me that wasn’t completely accurate, I asked them why they thought it worked that way. For example, there was a level with circles dependent on mouse speed. Some players told me they thought the circles acted on mouse speed, but only when moving vertically. Which made sense, seeing the level had only open vertical spaced to move around in. This assumption made it pretty difficult for them to move to the right past the speed-based circles. Changing the level design, by allowing more movement, helped to explain the mechanic much better.