Engine: Unity
Development Time: 2021 August - 2021 November
Team Position: Game Designer/ QA Manager/ Sound Designer
Team Size: 7
More Than Comrades is an RTS and narrative text game, where the player controls a squad of soldiers sent to the arctic to discover what has happened to a base that has not been contacted in some time.
Considering the difficulties in getting the strategic/narrative to not only meld but feel compelling, we knew that testing for usability, feel, and readability were absolutely important. Even before we switched to the squad based RTS combat above, we tried a hex turn-based, and a theoretical dice/resource managing game. We went through a lot of iteration and changes to ensure that the RTS elements specifically were honed, and what long time RTS fans were expecting.
Managing the QA, making the questions and running our testing was one of my main responsibilities as we were working on the game. During the testing I would present both the narrative and RTS, and then once the tester was done I gave them a questionnaire to fill out. Once everything was gathered I would collate the responses for the team, and then present my suggestions to them. I was an equal for the team, since we were so small. So my thoughts on the design and what was needed were very much considered and sometimes implemented if we all agreed it was a good way to move forward. With that process we got steadily better and better results from both general testing, and also testing a more specific audience. Eventually leaving us with the modern version of the game.