Introduction

Many student games suffer from a severe lack of play-testing. Between classes, homework, and projects, most teams are not willing to work testing into their schedule. It seems too time consuming and not nearly as beneficial as using that same time to code. My teammates and I had all made this mistake in the past, but resolved to change for the better this year. Our play-test schedule ended up working out really well for us, and the game has exceeded our expectations in every way.

In this article I will be discussing some of the ideas and strategies our team adhered to while play-testing Toblo, a game developed at DigiPen Institute of Technology for our junior year project. We began with a core gameplay which revolved around building towers. The game was to be relatively slow-paced, with thought and care going into each block placement. What we now have is a very fast-paced game of ‘capture the flag’ in which the player throws blocks and destroys everything in sight. This design overhaul occurred shortly after our third play-test, during which it became abundantly clear that people had more fun knocking the towers down than building them. The most visible benefit of our play-tests was an entirely new core gameplay, but the tests also gave us plenty of other insights as well.

Toblo Kaboom