You will fail You can’t possibly know all the right design decisions up front. Things you thought would work, will fail miserably and you will have to change them. This will happen a lot and you should get used to it. If you’re scared of failing, you’re not going to get anywhere.
Fail faster One from Lewis Pulsipher:
“You want to find all the ways your game can fail, and eliminate or fix them. So the faster you fail, the quicker you can eliminate or fix the failures. Or start over! Get a playable prototype done as soon as possible – there is NO Substitute. If you’re doing a video game, try to make a paper prototype first, to try things out.”
Playtest! Playtest and know what to look out for. Ideally you want to test if the focus you decided on earlier is getting through to your players. Ask them what they think your game is about. Maybe it’s something entirely else, maybe they have no idea. It can also happen your game is not fun at all. In any case, you will find problems while playtesting and that’s great. Decide what the biggest are, try and fix them, and playtest again.
Make sure you playtest with players you actually intent your game for. Testing with friends or family will only bring you so far.
If all goes well, you’re game is getting better over time and problems become smaller. Now is the time for the ultimate test: playtest it with your mother. It probably won’t go as smoothly as you’d hope, and you’ll find your game pretty much still sucks. Most likely your sweet mother has not played many games and won’t be able to get far. You’ll find you’ve made many assumption about the player’s knowledge to play your game. If it makes any sense for your game, testing like this is a great way to find problems and make your game more accessible.
For Circles I wanted it to be as accessible as possible, anyone should be able to play. Showcasing at events also helped out immensely. It’s surprising to see the variety of people that go to these events (or tag along). You’ll get so much valuable feedback out of it, although this only covers the first 10 minutes of your game. Which is super important, but won’t predict the success of your entire game.
As for playtesting, questions I would look out for were: Is there enough feedback? Does the player know what’s happening? Do they know what to do at any time? Where do they get stuck and is that a bad thing? What do players like? How can I enhance that?
Playtest with kids If this makes any sense for your game, do it. It’s a great way to get some brutally honest feedback on your game. Children are super reactive, every little reaction you’d see on a regular playtest you’ll see multiplied by 10.
Know when to stop or just leave it for a playtest Don’t polish systems or content that you haven’t tested yet. However great it may seem, it may fail and be thrown out the next day. Don’t do it!
I sure did it…
Playtesters won’t tell you everything When you have a seemingly simple game and a playtester doesn’t understand something, there’s a good chance he or she won’t say it (or isn’t even aware of it). This might not always be a big problem, but it can cause issues to keep persisting without a clear explanation why. Keep asking why and try to find the root of the problem.
With Circles, this specifically happened on a level where people kept dying and I couldn’t understand why. Players understood they couldn’t touch circles on the first few levels, but then progressed to the next level and seemingly forgot about it. It wasn’t that much of a problem, most of of them would would continue without a problem. But when I asked about it, I didn’t really get an explanation. Until at one point one player told me he died because he wanted to touch a circle in order to collect it. It was blue instead of the regular red and seemed like a pickup. Consciously, or unconsciously players wanted to touch these. Changing the color to a more reddish tint helped to prevent the issue and solidify the idea that circles are dangerous.
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.
Don’t listen to solutions from playtesters The solutions offered by playtesters may work, but probably won’t solve your problems effectively. Try to listen to the problems that lie underneath.
In early prototypes of Circles people often suggested I set circle colors based on their behavior. But this ran counter against the exploration and discovery elements the game was about. But clearly there was a problem. Players had a hard time discovering the function of circles and got confused when they were mixed up. Instead of changing the visuals, it became much more effective to make changes in level order and level designs. Now new circle types are introduced in a steady pace and always start with a new color palette. When mixing them up, circles are often bigger to illustrate their behavior better. I haven’t heard the suggestion ever since. Success!
