The first playtest of “Spacewolves” occurred last Thursday. Overall, playtesters seemed to enjoy the experience, particularly the humor and the voice-acting.
Perhaps one of the most important things we learned was that players had difficulty understanding the function of the “lure” – one of the main mechanics of the game. The lure is a player tool meant to be used to distract the enemy wolves, altering the target of their movement from the space station to the more mobile spaceship. The space station must be defended by the players in order to complete the level, but is placed in a fixed position at the start of the level that cannot be altered. The spaceship, which controls the lure, can fly around through space, and therefore, through use of the lure, drag the spacewolves away from their primary target and into the defense line of the players’ guns.
However, due to the ambiguity of the language in the tutorial and the lack of introduction time for the mechanic, players misunderstood the function of the lure. Players seemed to think that the lure was used to bring forth spacewolves, i.e. to trigger an enemy wave. Thus, when the spacewolves began to attack en mass, they did not use the lure, since they believed it would make the problem worse. Since the lure is the only way to keep the wolves away from the station, this meant that the playtesters were quickly defeated. (There was an exception for the first playtest, where players picked up on the mechanic immediately – so it is not a universal problem. However, it is still an important one, since the lure is one of the game’s primary mechanics.)
We plan to fix this problem by changing the second tutorial level so that it requires the player to repeatedly distract a single spacewolf before the players are allowed to continue. This will introduce the mechanic more gradually, and ensure that the ship player has mastered it before the game can continue.
Some other things that we need to change/implement based on the playtest:
* The station/mouse-based player needs more control. Implement bombs that can be used strategically by this player to blow up wolves and/or the players’ own structures.
* Implement health bars on the wolves, to give an indication of how close they are to death. Also a wave indicator, showing how far the player is through the level.
* Increase the size of the play field; shrink all the elements to give the ship more room to fly around.
Overall, we had a good experience playtesting. People were fairly positive about the game, but we still learned about some major areas that needed fixing. It was interesting to see playtesters of different ages trying out the game (one of our testers was 11), and to see how players who didn’t know each other versus players who did interacted with the cooperative system. The observation room felt a little creepily voyeuristic, but was ultimately valuable.