So I let my siblings test it out and they were able to figure out the basic idea pretty quickly, that they needed to press the colored arcade buttons when the falling tiles reached the hit line on screen. The colors helped a lot because they made the connection between the physical buttons and the tiles more obvious. But they were confused at first about when exactly they were supposed to press, since there were no instructions during gameplay, so they needed a few seconds of trial and error to understand the timing.
I think the mapping between the controls and the experience worked well because each button matched a lane and color on screen, which made the interaction feel natural. Once players understood that each button controlled a specific lane, they were able to continue without much help. The physical arcade buttons also made the experience feel more immersive compared to using a keyboard.
I think the strongest part of the experience was the atmosphere. The background visuals, projector reveal screen, sound design, and glitch effects made the game feel tense and it matched the theme and concept well. They especially liked the reveal screen because it felt like a reward after completing each round and made them curious about the story.
The main area that could be improved is clarity at the beginning. One of them were unsure whether to press buttons immediately or wait for the tiles to reach the bottom hit line. I found myself explaining the timing and the goal of “rebuilding the signal” so they could progress. To make this clearer, I could improve the instruction screen by adding a short visual example or animation showing exactly when to press the buttons (like a quick tutorial).
(Also, I noticed I wrote 4 rounds but its kind of 5 because you have to play again to go to the final message…I am thinking about just reducing it maybe its too long of a game??)