As I was conducting user testing for my game, an actual storm was hitting Abu Dhabi, echoing the storm scenario in my game and making the experience feel all the more relatable.
I enlisted my sister to test the game without any prior instructions, which was a great decision as the game proved to be intuitive—she knew immediately that she needed to press the button. However, since I haven’t yet built the controller box, I had to hold it for her. For the wooden block, I explained that she should imagine it as a car moving on the screen.
To my surprise, she played better than I did! It was really enjoyable to watch my game perform exactly as intended. She managed to figure everything out smoothly; the only hiccup was the wooden block. If it had actually looked like a car, I wouldn’t have needed to explain anything. I also handled connecting to the serial port since she wasn’t familiar with it. For the actual exhibition, I’ll provide short written instructions for the connection to assist anyone if I’m not around.
Area for improvement:
The game runs smoothly overall, but the collision detection between the hail and the car is glitchy. Sometimes it triggers a game over even when it shouldn’t, which is quite frustrating. I plan to resolve this issue before the exhibition for sure.