Playtesting

I was at my second Full Indie event in Vancouver (in Richmond this time, actually) since their post-pandemic return in 2023. Similar to the first one, I had a lot of conversations introducing myself along the lines of "I work in the game industry, and I also have an indie project I'm working on..." followed by questions if I could show it to them. This time I at least had a video, unlisted on YouTube. But nothing playable.

I had conflicting feelings on showing the game. On one hand, the content I've actually created is quite short. Just a handful of rooms. Most of my work has gone into figuring out the core gameplay and making things functional, and becoming more comfortable with pixel art. I am a level designer by trade and think a lot about the way I want the game's world to flow, but very little of that had made it to the game yet.

One comment resonated with me, from someone who always brings his game to these events for feedback. He talked about how Valve does playtesting super early, referencing a recent Game Maker's Toolkit episode on the topic. To add fuel to the fire, that same evening I played another developer's game that was an Advance Wars-like game with no working enemy AI yet. He just wanted to get feedback on what was there - building and controlling your own units.

So, at my third Full Indie I brought Chrono Blazer.

I sat a little bit awkwardly with a laptop, sitting on a barebones "Press A to Start" main menu. I had printed out the controls for the game, thinking that if for some reason I can't pay attention to the setup people could at least figure out how to play. After a few minutes, I glanced up and made eye contact with someone. He came over and played, and once gameplay was on the screen people kept coming over.

There was a pretty steady stream of players in the first hour of the event, leading up to presentations by a couple of speakers. I saw that some elements of the game "just work", which was great. Other things were clearly too hard, and other things were very unclear. And a handful of people ran into the fact that I just haven't made much content yet.

I'm not a stranger to playtesting. Something my work in the game industry has given me is the understanding that nobody (I really mean nobody) is a good game designer in a vacuum. Showing your work to other people is crucial. Still, there is something quite humbling about realizing something is wrong with your assumptions and then having to sit there for an hour and have it proven over and over. In the moment, I started to feel a bit flustered with playtesting. I think some people thought I was showing off a demo to impress them, when really this was a rough-around-the-edges work in progress. 

On reflection, what was I really trying to learn with playtesting? And what were the main takeaways? 

The player is expected to die, and they will be restarting the game each time (for now - I plan to implement checkpoints). There is no procedurally generated content, so it's the same each time. Do people find that annoying? Tiring?

Luckily, no! Everyone I asked said they didn't mind. One person said he would want to "grind it out". I also had two paths the player could take set up, so people would tend to bounce between the two. However, some people would die once and hand me the controller thinking that was it.

The ship movement is also a little weird. My main inspiration for that is Fantasy Zone, which features a small ship that can move in 8 directions and never stops moving. When you stop pushing a direction in Chrono Blazer, the ship will idle at a slower speed in the last direction you input. You never fully stop. Will that feel weird to people?

I had no comments about the ship feeling weird to control, and whenever I asked the response almost seemed like confusion. It just works and people seemed to vibe with it immediately.

You collect something I'm calling Flux Crystals to use as a currency to buy upgrades for your ship. Will that be clear to people?

Yes, but my "economy" was way off. Some people played for a while and could never afford a single upgrade. I also think the pacing of the real game (which will have some story sequences and tutorialization interspersed with the opening moments, not just dropping the player in cold) will help. The game was also really hard (more on that later) so without upgrades, people would lose their motivation to continue.

You need to shoot a special object to collect a special resource to "Level Up". Will that be clear to people?

Absolutely not. Nobody understood this. I think dialog and tutorials can support this better. There is nothing in the game telling you about this object at all, and the object you need to shoot takes a few hits. When you're trying to survive (the game has time pressure!), it's something easy to deprioritize. It's not trying to kill you and it's hard to kill. It makes sense people will skip it.

Is the difficulty right?

It was too hard. I do have to be a bit conscious of audience here though - some people got the hang of it quickly and burned through everything I had to show in a few minutes. Others probably could have played what I had to show for an hour and not get through it all. Who am I targeting? Is this game for more hardcore audiences? Ultimately, I think I do want it to be manageable and fun for a variety of skill levels. The game will be hard, but I want to give people a chance to find their footing and push through. 

In one kind of embarrassing moment, I had an experienced developer very calmly explain that one of my hazards needs a "tell". I knew it did but put it in anyway, thinking I'd just show everything I have. It shows that certain things probably can be playtested too early. Everyone got hung up on that hazard. On that note, a little bit of polish helps. Some of my rougher tile work seemed to make certain areas harder to read, and I had a couple of bugs I've known about for months but people kept hitting. They're easy for me to ignore, but it's confusing for someone who's just been handed the controller to suddenly lose their cursor on a menu or have the camera pan over to reveal the empty space beyond what they're supposed to be seeing.

What's next?

The playtest was ultimately really motivating for me, and I made some changes almost immediately. Enemy fire rates were reduced. Cost of upgrades was reduced. The giant explosion that follows you everywhere shakes the screen (as a warning) a bit earlier. 

There are some other things I have been working on since or plan to work on soon to address some issues and lead to more fruitful future playtests:

• Some helpful items to buy early in the game.
• This serves two purposes - gives players something to spend their money on if they've maxed out the upgrades at their current level, and makes the game easier.
• Ideas for this are a deployable shield and a "stasis bomb" that freezes enemies in place.
• Get some rough narrative in.
• I always saw this as a "later" thing, but I think onboarding players into what they're doing and why is important. 
• More content!
• This is time consuming, but it needs to happen. I have enough pieces working now that I should be able to double what I have now within a reasonable timeframe. Some players may still reach the "end" of what I've got.
• Ultimately, the game world will have to be finite. So this is an interesting problem to explore.

I also toyed with a rewind mechanic after this, with the idea being that players struggling with the game have a safety net but it uses the same resource as some of your other abilities, so you're sacrificing your ability to use them. I got a basic version of this working, and pretty quickly realized it broke a lot of what I'm trying to accomplish with this game. It may come back as a late-game upgrade, but for now it has been shelved.