Playtesting

Levels are diverse, so they have their own assortment of errors: playtesting a regular layout will differ greatly from playtesting a minigame due to the heavy differences in trigger work. As a result, there's no "proper" way to playtest. The more errors you fix, the better. Even so, there are elements that you can focus on when you playtest such as: enjoyability, reliability, playability, balancing, and presentation.

• Enjoyability: Is the level fun and interesting to play?

Note your experience when you go through the level. Chances are, some parts will frustrate or bore you, and others will leave you blown away or entranced in a flow state; this determines a lot of your preferences. Player preferences wildly differ, and sometimes conflict with each other; compare memory levels with sightreadable levels. As a result, no level will please everyone. You will need to also note your target audience's enjoyability and preferences for fun.

• Reliability: Does the level run as intended?

Understand the level's rules, and try to break them. This reveals bugs, secret ways, poor optimizations, and many more. Fixing these errors makes the level work exactly as you want it to. Since this is the GD Editor, that seems like a high bar. Before Update 2.2, this was important when the game's physics also differ between refresh rates. Bug Fixing will be covered further in its own lesson.

• Playability: How player-friendly is the level?

Make sure the level is "fair", clear, and expected. The last thing a player wants is to die for no solid reason; transitions are very infamous for frustrating the player like that. A great sign of playability is if a player rebeats the level even though it's unnecessary.

• Balancing: How consistent is the level's quality?

This element can be applied for both your gameplay's difficulty, and decoration quality. They have to be the same throughout the level without much deviation. Arguably, you can have some differences for progression. Also, if the level has multiple paths that vary in difficulty, make sure their rewards are worth the extra risk; this will be further explained in Strategy & Skill.

• Presentation: How clearly does the level convey its vision and goals?

This is shown by the level’s message, theme, style, or atmosphere. Having a vision represented across the level in a cohesive and structured manner shows a strong attention to detail. For example, if you're building a level ONLY about avocados, then adding an onion background in the middle of the level would seem off.

Playtesting these elements simultaneously would be challenging, so it’s recommended to focus on one at a time. There is no right or wrong order in which you do these, either. The main takeaway here is: there are no shortcuts when it comes to playtesting.

After you feel comfortable with your playtesting, the best thing to do is to hand your level off privately to other people for feedback. There are some tips to keep in mind:

• Order of Familiarity

The more familiar you are with someone, the earlier they should playtest. Why? Because they tolerate your errors more and knows your vision more intimately. The order goes like this:

• Yourself 

• Close Friends 

• Useful Acquaintances 

• Strangers 

However, this tolerance comes with a cost: errors tend to be glossed over. If you keep the same set of playtesters for long enough, they will suffer from this problem as well. You need to bring in fresh sets of eyes to look at your level throughout its creation.

This is a good time to use the GDCS server to reach out and socialize, as it helps you network with these different types of playtesters. For GD, these close friends and useful acquaintances come in the form of creators and players.

• Find Creators First

When looking for playtesters, search for experienced creators to play and give feedback to your level, then get other players to give their thoughts on the level.

Arguably, players aren’t able to give as much detailed and valuable advice as creators. If you give them a level in a rougher work-in-progress state, they get fixated on the roughness and unfinished quality to give any good feedback. Furthermore, they might be unable to give solutions to any problems they find. 

Meanwhile, creators help you iron out any major issues that can be found, along with detailed solutions and feedback; after all, they're familiar with the editor. 

Afterwards, players can tell you the general experience they had playing the level, in which you can make changes from there. With having other people see and play your level, it helps them find flaws that you as the creator couldn’t find, especially when it comes to aesthetics and dynamics. This is either due to their playstyle, taste, skillset, or even the hardware itself.

• Take It All in

Regardless of who the playtesters are, the key point is to listen to every piece of feedback they provide for you. You may disagree or feel hurt with some of them, but drop your ego. In the end, it's likely that others will think the same way, and a change can overall benefit the level. Plus, your priority is to improve the level, not to prove them wrong.

Ask for detailed and constructive feedback. The conversation between you and the playtester should not be one-sided. To recap the Getting Ideas guide, keep brainstorming about how they feel, how the level conveys its message, if the goals of the level were met. This way, you can recognize a lot of areas in your level to improve on. 

Don’t be afraid to ask them for specific parts of the level, its gameplay, its decoration, or just telling them to break the level in any way they can.