Beta Test Progres Report

Here is the Beta Test Writeup for Accidentally Plaid..

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          Accidentally Plaid has just finished up it's second round of playtesting, using our Beta Build, and we have some interesting results to report. Our testers included one casual gamer, three game designers, and one hardcore gamer. The reason we did this was we wanted to see what different mindsets had to say about our game.
         The biggest thing that our playtesters seemed to like about the game was that it combined two very different elements and put them together. One playtester described the experience as "eating icecream while drinking a beer", it's two things you don't expect to go together but they just happen to taste good. One of the things that they liked about the game was that it provided them with controlled chaos, the ability to get stuck bouncing forward and unable to do anything about it. One playtester said she would have liked to have seen more of that in the game. Another things that playtesters enjoyed was the ability to use the ramps, he said that was probably the most satisfactory thing about the game.
       Something that all the playtesters agreed upon was that the artstyle of the game was a bit confusing, and everything seemed to be a bit too dark. One playtester said he liked the chicago theme but that unfortunately, there might not be enough colors to go off of to really sell a pinball game. One suggestion this tester provided was to go for a minimalistic style, that it might have an overall better effect on the game. Something else that all of the playtesters agreed upon was that there was no challenge to the game and that they would have liked to have had some sort of risk and reward. This goes along with the difficulty curve, something we know we have had trouble implemented. One playtester described herself as an "achievement whore", somebody who wants to find different tasks in the game and complete them, and suggested that maybe our game could have different levels of success depending on how many points were attained in the game.
       Moving forward, we have about a week and a half to really get something solidified here and we still have a lot to work on. The three biggest things that our team took away was the we need add in challenge to the level design, increase the difficulty curve, and make the art style more cohesive. We are also going to be looking into adding in the different levels of success at the end of the game, for re-playability.
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