One More Week Alpha testing feedback [WEEK 19]

 Feedback -

Recently I have been sending out the Alpha test of our game across all of my friends and some public discord servers I'm in to get some feedback and to test for bugs. Unfortunately, despite my efforts and explaining that Alpha testing is vital for not only our games development but also our final grade, only a dew people managed to play our game at the current moment, three of them being my friends Francis, Vincent and August. This was helpful in some ways as I was able to have a conversation with them about the aim of the game, the message behind it, and discuss our plans for future development to get their feedback on it. Overall they really enjoyed our game both visually and from a gameplay stance, however found the main character's design disappointing and unfinished looking. When i explained to them our teams plan of omitting the visual of the main character altogether, they thought this idea might not be a good one and would perhaps damage the readability of this game. Although I have no written evidence of this feedback, i have showed this game to another of my friends and both of my parents and explained this idea to them too, which they also did not like this idea and thought it would negatively impact our game. I thought that this feedback would be very useful to show my team so i sent some screenshots in our Alpha testing channel on discord.

Francis's feedback

Our team's responses -

The main consensus of my team is that they do not want to follow this advice and think that removing the visual of the main character will improve the immersive quality, they have backed up their points with some good information explaining how other visual novels usually don't show the main character and focus mainly on the NPCS and overall storyline. Niamh offered a good middle ground of having a character selector menu to customize the main character to best represent the player. Personally, i have to be honest and say i agree more with the original feedback saying not to remove the main character from the game, all of my friends do not match the visual description of the main character and yet still connected with the dialogue and found having the visual of the character helped them feel more engrossed in the story. I also really like the visual of the main character being there, i think without there will be many scenes of the player just staring at empty backgrounds and it may feel jarring or boring to look at. However it seems this stance is mostly out of favour with my group despite the fact many people think it will be detrimental to our end product. I think we are going to go ahead with removing the character regardless, which i am alright with, i don't have to remove too much from my script and i appreciate my team backing up their ideas with points, but i do think that listening to our playerbase is important, especially if the odds are 5/5 play testers agree with that opinion. On the other hand, i think it is important to get some feedback from people who are not directly associated with me as i worry their opinions may be biased, hence why i am eager for more people to play our game and give their opinions for a more fair judgement of our game.

I would also like to make a contradictory point on the basis of other visual novels showing or not showing the main character. I am choosing two examples to look at, Doki Doki literature club, and Class of '09. In Doki Doki literature club you do not see the main player/protagonist at any point of the game, this is a design choice made as the main focus of the games story revolves around the other NPCs so the main focus will be directed to them rather than the player character. In comparison to this, Class of  '09 follows the character Nicole and her choices throughout the story, at all points of the game you can see the main character Nicole as well as the NPCs. The game is still immersive with it's wide range of story branches that keep the player entertained and make them feel like their decisions matter. Looking at how our game plays, it more closely follows the story structure of class of '09, in which the story's main focus is the main character and their emotions, with the NPC's being supplementary elements. This is my reasoning for backing up the idea of keeping the main character, and how having the visual of them being there will not break the immersive quality of the game.

Doki Doki Literature club's gameplay

Class of '09s gamplay [Nicole is the character on the left with black hair]

Update Alpha test feedback-

We now have an extra feedback form from someone else who has played our game. Their feedback was overall pretty positive, explaining how we tackled the subject of Generalized anxiety disorder well and how gameplay was quite interactive, they liked the characters and found overall the games was quite fun [also they didnt find any bugs which is always good], the only feedback they gave us is maybe to add in some extra contextual moments to make the story believable, how did richie know to call sweaters, maybe have an a scene where the main character calms down a bit by themselves in their room. It is really nice to get some more feedback especially from people who arent directly in contact with me so i can get a more fair judgement on how our game is looking.