PV266 – Game Development II
Task 3 – Playtesting
Spring 2021
Goals:
1. Create a build of your game for playtesting and submit it
○ team-work
○ Deadline: 9th of May (incl.)
2. Record and submit “let’s playtest” videos (where you play the games of others)
○ individual work
○ Deadline: 16th of May (incl.)
3. Live playtesting session
○ team-work
○ Dates: 17th and 18th of May
4. Feedback Analysis
○ team-work
○ Deadline: 30th of May (incl.)
1. Builds:
● Create and thoroughly test a build of your game (make sure it is runnable on a
computer with a Windows 10 OS).
● Remove a folder:
[Your-game-name]_BackUpThisFolder_ButDontShipItWithYourGame
● Create a .zip package containing the build and upload it to the homework vault. If
you think that other players might have problems with controlling your game, please
add the "controls.md" file into the .zip package. Do not describe any background
story or explanations, just controls.
2. Let's playtest videos:
● The purpose of this task is to provide feedback to other teams by creating a kind of
“let’s play” video where you will be playing the games of others. You will create and
submit one “let’s playtest” video for each game you will be testing (see schedule).
● For each recording, it holds that:
○ Length: at least 10 minutes of gameplay (or full playthrough if you manage to
do it faster ;-). In other words, you should play a big enough portion of the
game to provide useful feedback to the developers but you do not have to
finish the whole game. Feel free to cut the video in case you are stuck too long
on some puzzle, fight, and so on.
○ Similarly to “let’s play” videos, while playing the game, you will record the
screen and your voice (mandatory) and, if possible, also your face (not
mandatory but highly recommended). Your goal is not to entertain the
audience, but to provide constructive feedback by commenting on what you
see and what you think at the moment; what you like and what you do not
like; what is your general feeling about the game. This way, the developers
will be able to see directly how you interact with the game, hear your
comments and possibly also see your, possibly unintentional, face reactions.
You should be commenting your feelings about various aspects of the game how
the visuals look like? Is the pace of the game OK for you? Is everything
clear or do you feel confused? Do you know what to do and how to do it?
What about difficulty? Do you feel stuck with a puzzle? Are the enemies too
easy or too hard to overcome?
● Some games are designed for local multiplayer. If possible, try to involve other
people to play with you. If not possible, try to play the game on your own.
● Video files:
○ For recording the videos, we recommend to use OBS software
(https://obsproject.com/) - it is open source, multiplatform, allows detailed
settings and produces high quality results. You can easily add an overlay with
your camera on top of game capture.
○ Use some reasonable quality of video encoding - see screenshot (at the end of
this document) with example of settings that produce nice results with
slightly larger video files.
○ Upload the videos into the homework vaults - there are separate folders for
each game.
3. Organization of live play-testing:
Students will divide into two roles: "Player" and "Observer" 
● Players will be testing games of other teams, giving comments and feedback.
● Observers will be watching Players and will gather and write down feedback.
Each seminar will be divided into three fixed "time slots". During each slot, several play-test
sessions will be happening in parallel. During one play-test session:
1. One Player and at least one Observer will meet in a defined “testing room” (channel
in Teams) - see the schedule.
2. Optional, recommended – Observer can record the whole streaming for later
analysis.
3. Player will play the game for about 10 minutes with audio comments ("thinking out
loud"). During this phase, the Observer should stay silent.
4. Afterwards, discussion (~ 6 minutes long) between Player and Observers will take
place.
5. Everyone will rest for a minute :-)
Setup before the live play-testing seminar:
● Download and unpack all builds BEFORE the class! Please, do not play the games in
advance - to give genuine feedback.
● Prepare your favourite tool for gathering feedback - pen+paper, digital notebook,
Notepad++, vim, etc.
● Everybody will need a microphone. Web cameras are strongly recommended for
Players.
4. Feedback Analysis
1. Write down all the feedback from videos and from live playtesting gathered by all
members of your team into a single document. Try to organize it - by type (visual /
code / gameplay) or (bug / comment / suggestion) or by severity (minor / major /
game stopper) or whatever taxonomy will suit you.
2. Discuss with the team “what to do” with individual items on your list. E.g.
a. bugs should be probably fixed :) If those are not features ;) If is intended as a
feature, but it was tagged as a bug by multiple players, you should discuss
this issue.
b. suggestions could be accepted and implemented or discarded
c. balancing issues should be discussed - will you increase / decrease / keep the
speed, difficulty?
3. Write down your decisions.
4. Submit a .pdf file with feedback analysis.
5. Schedule
● online, here
● The distribution of students is semi-random (the “breaking up” of teams is
intentional). Each of you should spend some time as the Player and as the Observer.
● Notice that there are three sheets in the file ;-)
Please read these instructions and the schedule carefully. If anything is not clear, ask in
advance.
If anything breaks during the play-testing sessions, try to fix it, but keep the schedule in
mind and try not to be late for the next time slot.
If your playtesting partner will not appear in time in the correct “room”, try to “ping” or call
them. If nobody will appear within a few minutes, feel free to self-organize with another
odd person (meaning non-even ;-) if there will be any to create an ad-hoc testing session. Or
join any other testing room as a silent observer.
Example of OBS settings: