During the last week, we did our first playtesting with our game's first prototype. It was an exciting moment, and as obviously expected, problems arose related to our game.

But don't despair! This is normal. No designer has ever been able to measure the infinite possibilities of errors that a project can have, and it's good that these errors are visualized still in production. So, if you do a playtest and no player complains about anything, there is certainly something that you should worry about.

A good foundation makes a good nation

One of the issues we saw during our testing was that the game's purpose was unclear to some players. Which scared us a little, but maybe it's still too early to define the cause of this problem. After all, our prototype still lacks some core elements of our gameplay. At the moment, it's just a sandbox for the development of Under Choices, without the narrative or the progression elements. An explanation to the difficulty some players had to find an objective.

However, this was enough to make our team aware of this possible problem. So, last week we reviewed the game core loop of our project to ensure that the purpose of our game is clear to the entire team.

Likewise, we also go deep into defining each of the elements of our loop to make sure nothing can go wrong.

Can you see?

Another problem reported by players after the playtest was that they had difficulty identifying the information in the posts interface.

As reading and understanding the elements present in it is essential for the gameplay of Under Choices, we chose to redo these UI elements in our game.

We analyzed how the most successful social media display their post, to understand and bring these elements into the posts of our game. We made new mockups based on these references for an easy structural visualization of the interface and finally updated it, leaving it with a much cleaner and more defined look. Now we need to test again to see if these changes will solve the problem.

Texturing sounds

In terms of sound, it was initially in the composition and definition of harmonies and melodies that will be part of the songs in our game—ensuring that the audio aesthetic is clear right away to avoid any unexpected style changes in the future.

After finishing the composition of our songs, now our focus is on refining the sound elements that will be present in our game. This includes ambient sounds (background audio, noises, etc.), dominant elements and accompaniments, audio synthesis and texture & gesture. All those factors will be essential to create an immersive and remarkable original soundtrack for our game.