From Clark Kromenaker and Andrew Ogden
The most valuable feedback we received from playtesting were critiques of the movement controls. Some people were confused by the use of left/right with circular movement, and everyone had precision issues with moving the ship (this issue has already been resolved as a response to the complaints). People also never used the in/out movement, and found shooting to be very difficult at long range. We also got some good graphic feedback; a lot of people liked the graphics, but many people had complaints about the player and enemies looking too similar or being wantons/pizza (whatever that means). We think that the ship graphic just does not convey the idea of a ship adequately. Finally, we discovered that people didn’t realize that the cities on earth would be destroyed when hit – we had thought this was obvious.
Overall, it was an enjoyable and useful experience. The feedback we received was so invaluable that we think it would be useful to be able to do them after each new feature is added. As much as we try, our proximity to the game just makes it very difficult for us to imagine what someone new will see in our project. We never thought we’d need a story for such a simple game concept, but it turns out that people were unmotivated or confused without this specific direction.
-Clark & Andrew