Lives & Score System User Testing
Scoring systems and Lives systems are both key components of gameplay. Score systems provide an incentive for players to achieve a high score, while Lives give players more opportunities to overcome certain obstacles before being forced to restart. Both of these features aim to increase engagement with the game and prolong gameplay.
User testing performed was designed to evaluate the implementation of the Lives and Score system. Users were asked a answer a short quantitative questionnaire, then followed up with a few qualitative questions.
Users were then prompted for qualitative feedback according to these questions:
- Do you think the number of lives offered is sufficient? If not, how many should be initially offered?
- Where do you think the lives and score features should be located on the screen?
- What do you think about the visual appearance of the icons used?
Overall, participants did not believe there were inconsistencies in how the Score and Lives features were implemented. There was a general consensus that the features were integrated well into the game, and that their functionality and appearance behaved as expected. This could be due to the fact that both lives and score systems are more straightforward features as functionality does not change across varying game genres. All interviewees thought positively of the appearance and location of the Lives icon and Score in the top left corner of the game screen.
Some users commented and gave feedback on other aspects of the game, mainly being how it was not complete. Three out of four people believed that the number of lives initially offered should be no more than three. After briefly interacting with the game, users believed that the game difficulty was not high so offering five lives was not necessary. In addition, User 3 mentioned that did not know if the live counter represented the number of remaining lives left of their current number of lives, and were initially slightly confused if "0 Lives" represented 0 remaining lives or death. Surprising, only two users asked about why the icon was a ghost, and what significance that had as it did not seem to align with the game theme.
From the user feedback received, there were no major issues discovered. A future improvement to be implemented would be to set the initial number of lives to be 3, which better reflect the difficulty of the game. In addition, the lives icon will be updated to a heart icon to closer align with the game theme.
Note: This user feedback was performed prior to changes in the background design as the font is currently black and cannot be seen against a dark navy background. Fonts and icons will be updated to be white in colour for higher contrast.