User Play Testing

Testing Overview

Testing Plan

Testing Results

Raw Data

Average Difficulty Rating: 6.25

Average ‘Fun’ Rating: 5.93

Testing Evaluation

Gameplay Evaluation

Design Evaluation

Controls and Usability Evaluation

Changes Made

Balance Changes Result

Final Recommendations

Gameplay

There was a lot of feedback received for the gameplay aspect of the game and so below are some recommendations for what to do with the game and its future direction based on feedback given.

With regards to combat, there needs to be some incentive in order to have the players engage with the primary attack system. Some potential ways to reduce the player's reliance on the AOE attack and the ranged attack would be to put them on a cooldown of some kind so they could not be spammed. In turn they could perhaps be buffed in some way to give a little back to the player so they don't feel too underwhelming as a result.

Another change that would have to occur would be to make the primary combat system of the game feel like punishing and harsh and instead satisfying to use. Some suggestions that were received from players were as follows:

• Increase the player range a little
• Increase player knockback and reduce enemy knockback
• Increase player damage or give them so way to defend themselves (or give enemies an obvious tell as to when they plan to attack so the players can step away)
• Add some other forms of pickups to the environment other than just potions, so buffs or spells of some kind to mix up the pace of combat

Those could all be tried in various combinations to see what help reduce player frustation when dealing with the combat system as the combat in the game is supposed to be more satisfying and rewarding and not feel difficult.

The environment was another area that received a significant amount of feedback especially from players who got to the third level. The number one complaint about the game was that traversing the thin bridges felt quite unfair as enemies would often hit them just once and they would be knocked into the lava and promptly die. They also found it frustrating that enemies could come from any direction on the lava while they were limited to the bridge which made them unable to attack horizontally as that would cause them to get off the bridge if they were to tap A or D to face the direction to attack.

Some potential ways to rectify this would be:

• Make the edges of the bridge walled so players could not fall into the lava while on bridges
• Reduce the damage that lava does to players so they have a larger time fram to get back out of the lava
• Increase the width of the bridges
• Make the enemy AI unable to traverse lava themselves

Some other general recommendations based on feedback about other sections of gameplay are listed below:

• Find ways to reduce the amount of frustration players experienced with lava
• Reduce anbd focus the amount of dialogue in the game
• Make the dialgoue more engaging from the get go as well as cohesive
• Increase the size of the maps
• Reduce the the amount of dead ends in maps
• Make sure that the bosses have a large enough arena in which to move around in

Controls and Usability

Overall, user testing results regarding the game's controls and level of usability were thorough and effective in identifying key areas of future work and improvement. The key recommendations for future work into developing and refining the game’s usability and controls include enhancing the control keys to better accommodate for diverse users by adding multiple options for controls, decreasing the pacing of the game, shortening the game’s dialogue and diversifying it to better appeal to users, improving the game’s interface to display an overview of the game and its key controls, therefore enhancing usability. Several other improvements suggested by users during testing involved potentially looking at adding a small map to the corner of the screen so that players can quickly find their position on the map, creating more items for the player to collect and regain health as well as better communicating the player’s progress through a progress bar displayed at the top of the map.

Design

People's feedback on the first impression of the game design was mostly positive. The design of each element in the game was found to be more exquisite. However, some feedback indicated that the character movements in the game are too rigid and not smooth, which requires further improvements in refining the game's special effects and animations.

Regarding the appearance and design of the game, feedback indicated that there were differences in the design styles of some animated characters. Therefore, the overall art style needs to be negotiated between the teams to discuss how to improve further and allow for. more consistent design. Various elements in the map can also design and implement some functions, and some feedback indicated that it was not clear whether something on the map was a trap or an aesthetic feature. There was also feedback gathered regarding the attack animation, with suggestions made to implement some decorations or special effects to improve the attack feel.

Regarding the attractiveness of the game, most users found this game to be relatively appealing and were attracted to the design and story background of the game. However, some users found the appeal of the game to be lacking and therefore future improvements would need to look at designing more unique gameplay designs to increase Last to Valhalla's market competitiveness.

Regarding the target audience of the game, feedback indicated that this game is suitable for teenagers and older adults. Due to the low operating difficulty of the game, it was found to be basically suitable for anyone. One suggestion mentioned a more precise classification, finding the game to be more suitable for people who pay attention to and experience the story of the game. Therefore, a future recommendation would be to better integrate the design and the dialogue introduction in order to increase the player's game and user experience.