Cave of Deception
My game, Cave of Deception, revolves around the prompt “expect the unexpected”. Unfortunately my family was out of town the week the game was due so I had to send it to one of my friends to test. We tried to record her experience playing it as well as the game being tested through discord but it would not allow us and stopped recording as soon as she opened the game. I was able to use discord to watch her reaction and her experiences with the game though which was really entertaining because I was able to see her work through problems first hand and learn the controls and realize how they related to the theme.
She responded to Cave of Deception positively overall, in the beginning I had to tell her a few things to understand her goal a little better. At first she simply died a lot but she did not take this negatively and still had fun as she progressed and learned. I eventually relayed the theme of “expect the unexpected” and let her know that not everything was what it seemed. She learned pretty quickly how the mechanics worked after that. For example, in the upper right hand corner of the game is a yellow circle that turns purple in a random amount of time. When purple, the controls are “normal” and as stated in the title screen of the game. When the circle turns yellow, left and right switch, making “A” lead you to the right and “D” lead you to the left (usually this is the opposite of course).
The player was easily able to understand the rules and procedures after I told her the idea of the game being deception. The rules were to essentially do things you wouldn’t normally think to do in a game, like fall into lava, in order to succeed and get to the end of the game. They didn’t do anything too unexpected when trying out my game, she did die a lot in the beginning which I mentioned previously but this did not deter her as she learned more each time. She had a lot of fun playing Cave of Deception and overall showed a lot of animated responses to things she never expected. Spoiler, in order to win the game, you have to die. In one of the rooms, you are forced to get “crushed” to enter the third room. Here, you are shot with bullets until your health is depleted, making you into a ghost who has free reign over the entirety of the map.
What stood out to me most about her experience with my game was how I could clearly watch her learning over time what she had to do. It was definitely trial and error but I thought it was a lot of fun to watch as she remembered the theme of the game and tried to apply it to her experience. I think if I were to make this game over again, I might be more consistent with which blocks hurt you and which don’t, Although, at the same time, it really did help to keep her interested by working through the game more like a puzzle. I learned that there’s a lot that goes into a game and that it is important to focus on each area as equally as possible.
