Playtest #2:
Player: My tired father
Length of the game:
The length of the game is 5 mins but my mom doesn’t really know how to play games so it took him 6 minutes.
Questions:
What can I add to the story so it won’t be too fast paced? Should I add more scenes in which I explain more of the what is happening or should I add more scenes that shows hints of you finding her dead body? Does the opening text sequence and the end sequence flow nicely with the story or is the story itself too choppy? Should I have added the therapy sequence to the game or would that have been too much?
Answers to the questions:
He thought there wasn’t much of a “beginning, middle and end” structure. Which I struggled with because of the time to create the scenes and to figure out the story in the amount of time we had. He also thought that there should be more illustrations especially where it was completely black. For example, he stated that he would’ve liked to seen an animation or flashes of her life or death. Which is a good idea, so I might incorporate a few seconds of her murder in another scene. I would like to add more scenes that had that glitch effect. Furthermore, he wants more structure in the gameplay and story. I agree with this and would like to achieve that. As I asked him how to make the game more engaging and immersive, he said that I should add more surprises to the gameplay. He also wants me to work more on dialogue because it was often boring and repetitive as I kept on writing “weird.” My dad didn’t think the therapy ending would be necessary because the end animation played out well. He thought it was interesting how he got to play as the little girl when she was alive. But during the end of the game he thought when we found her body it was very underwhelming and didn’t like the way I introduced the text. He also didn’t like the cliff scene so I would have to change that into a simpler terrain which would probably be flat. I would add maybe a hidden well or ditch of some sort so I can transition into the black sequence. Also, an example he wanted to add was to take inspirations from that weird vision tunnel scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the black sequences. So, the main things that I can work on for now because of timing is fix the dialogue, add more objects that hint towards her murder and to add animations to the characters.