Game design
Lesson 5
Testing your game
Introduction
In this lesson you will review your game and get feedback from your target audience in order to modify your design.
Watch the video for an introduction to the lesson.
Understanding the tasks
Rating the tasks
This lesson contains a few activities. Each activity will have one or more tasks. These tasks have been given a rating.
Some of the tasks in this lesson are must do. These are important to help you understand the introductory ideas or skills.
Have a go at the should do tasks and reach out to your friends or teacher if you need some advice. These will usually take a bit longer to complete than must do tasks.
Could do tasks will probably take you some extra time and might need you to get creative or problem solve. We strongly encourage you to try these.
Activity 1 - Self reflection
Task 1 - Self -evaluation
Spend time playing your own game.
Use the Game design self-evaluation Google Form to evaluate your game based on the criteria introduced in Lesson 1.
Modify your game based on your self-evaluation.
Task 2 - process review
Spend some time reflecting on the process of developing your own game.
Use the Game design 3-2-1 Google Slides template to guide your thinking.
Click on the image to open a new tab and view the Google Slides.
Click on the Use Template button to create a copy for you to edit.
Activity 2 - Sharing your game with the target audience
The development cycle works by adding small changes and getting feedback as you develop. Repeat this cycle until you are satisfied with your game.
Task 1 - Feedback from your target audience
Find users to test your game. Ideally, they will be people from your target audience.
Give a 30 second description of what your game is about.
Have them play your game.
Ask them for feedback.
Use the Game feedback Google Slides template to record their feedback.
Click on the image to open a new tab and view the Google Slides.
Click on the Use Template button to create a copy for you to edit.
Task 2 - Refining your game based on feedback
Convert the feedback from Task 1 into a list of features to implement.
Reflect on the feedback you gathered from users testing your game.
Identify what features you would like to modify based on the users' feedback.
Prioritise what features are most important to implement next.
Activity 3 - The pitch
Note: While we have linked to videos in this activity, any other pages or other material linked to beyond these videos are not endorsed by the department.
Task 1 - Cover art
Cover art is artwork presented on the front of game packaging.
1. Have a look at the examples of game cover art.
2. Use the Cover art Venn diagram Google Slides template to compare two of the cover art designs. Remember to think about target audience, theme and visual design elements.
3. Design the cover art for your game. Remember to use elements from your storyline development from Lesson 3.
Click on the image to open a new tab and view the Google Slides.
Click on the Use Template button to create a copy for you to edit.
Task 2 - Effective advertising
Work through the interactive presentation below to learn about the key elements of an effective advertisement.
Create an advertisement for your game using as many of the seven elements as possible. You could develop a video like the Minecraft trailer, or a poster with text and graphics that persuades your target audience to play your game.
Task 3 - Collecting opinions
Show your advertisement to someone else and ask them if they believe it is effective in enticing them to play the game.
Use the Collecting opinions Google Slides template to help you compare your thoughts about your advertisement with theirs.
Click on the image to open a new tab and view the Google Slides.
Click on the Use Template button to create a copy for you to edit.
Handing in your work
Don't forget to hand in the work you completed today!
Your teacher will have told you to do one of the following:
Upload any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your Learning Management system (MS Teams, Google Classroom for example).
Email any digital documents you created and any photos you took of your written work to your teacher.
Make sure you keep any handwritten work you did in your exercise book or folder as your teacher may need to see these when you are back in class.