Presentatioin Critiques (Week 9 Presentations)

3rd Cloud

This team had a great introduction, including good background info for their game, as well as their thought process. They took their time to make a digital prototype, and thus could prototype without hindering their game development - a good idea. With this, they could test their mechanics first-hand without having to transfer them to a paper prototype.

They chose testers with a good age range, yet still managed to choose people who could critique their prototype well. Prior to testing, they surveyed their users and gave them a synopsis. This is the first team so far that's tested their users in this aspect.

They received good feedback, and the biggest change they're planning to make is to allow the user to interact with everything. This will require a lot more programming, and I hope they have enough time to do it. They're also planning to make a user manual. I'm less enthused about this though, as most people will not read the manual, and they might end up relying on the manual to explain core aspects of the game.

On another note, they've developed their graphics well and it looks like the final game will be amazing.

Food Fight

They explained their prototype well in the presentation, but for their testers, they only provided instructions without any verbal instruction. Their game had a steep learning curve, and this resulted in their testers being quite confused. This was a bad decision on their part.

Most of the feedback they got was comments that the game was imbalanced. Just looking at the setup of the possible food items to be thrown though, this is pretty plain to see. I don't believe they took the original balancing into consideration enough.

Also, their battleship concept kind of blurs the metaphor of a food fight too much.

Drive Thru Tycoon

This group explained their core mechanic and goal, as well as the setup of their prototype, but they did not explain what their prototype WAS. All I know is that it was a real-time prototype. What the prototype entailed though, was not clear.

The presentation itself was not very good. Their slides were overly cluttered with text, and they read off their slides. Their speaker was also very soft. It's too bad he didn't go in Week 8 when the microphone was set up.

I don't believe they used their feedback well. All they mentioned that they got out of it was that they'd make a manual. I don't think this is the right course of action though, since they had a mini-manual in their prototype, and it didn't seem to help the testers. What they need is an in-game tutorial.