Paper Prototype Critiques for Week 9

Feedback and critique for Paper Prototype presentations from week 9. All feedback is focused on how the Prototype play test were conducted, not on the core game design idea.


Project title: Drive-thru Tycoon

Project Manager: Kevin Kao

Ah, there is much to be said for detail. I still have almost no idea as to what was done in the play test. I really needed to know exactly how the game mechanics broke down and translated into the paper prototype, and I didn't get nearly enough detail from the presentation.

So, lusting after those details, I read their testing document for more detail. Unfortunately, the set of instructions that were given to the testers were not included in their either. Without an actual break down of the step-by-step procedure, I can't give the feedback I'd like to, so I'm going to have to be predominately negative here.

I can't dissect their procedure, but I can review their results. The needed more specificity in breaking down their results and attaching them to a specific part of the play test. Knowing exactly what mechanic succeeded, which failed and what went wrong was important. Attributing the feedback to specific testers lets us know how much trouble each one encountered, and that is lost when all the feedback is lumped together.


Project title: Food Fight

Project Manager: Scott Ko

Much like the previous team, they proved detailed instructions for the user to follow, but have not provided those same instructions in the slides or the testing document.

So, onto the game mechanics I can figure out. This was Battleship. Not much different. Their initial game idea was not accurately represented with the Battleship approach with ONE exception. If the theme of the game is to emulate a 'Food Fight', then some degree of random chaos will exist in the game. Or, rather SHOULD exist in the game. The Battleship approach at least threw in a random element between players, but little else from the original game concept. I suppose the whole concept that each character involved in the food fight is simply one of the ships from Battleship works, but that remains mostly unchanged from Battleship's core mechanics.

My final word is that they really didn't make anything 'new' enough for the paper prototype to test the game mechanics and original idea of the game. On top of that, the personae chosen for the character cards were weak, and unrelated to each other OR the game's theme.


Project title: 3rd Cloud

Project Manager: Stevan Anas

This is a little more difficult . . . they didn't even do a paper prototype. They were already past that point in their development, and actually had a REAL prototype to test.

But that doesn't change the potential for feedback.

First off, I didn't notice much in the game that was an obvious change or improvement made from the original engine. The game mechanics used in the game were pretty much all built into the engine. There were no new game mechanics introduced by the team for testing purposes. Since testing your own unique changes to design is one of the most important parts of early prototyping, they did not receive a very crucial bit of feedback.

However, they appear to be putting more emphasis on the story and characters within the game, which were tested (to a fairly minor degree) in the game. There was not enough story provided in the testing document or in the presentation to evaluate that side of their prototype, though. I expect to be able to give more feedback after seeing their full prototype.


Project title: Circular Strife

Project Manager: Cody Church

Our team: I won't be critiquing us.