Questions:
1. What area did you explore first? Did this affect how you perceived the game?
2. Did you understand the story?
3. Were you engaged? Or was it boring?
4. Did you enjoy the random tangents in the story? What about the puns?
5. Did you find the monkey in the middle scene amusing?
6. How long did you spend playing the game?
7. Did you dislike any of the endings? Did you like the main ending?
8. What would you change about the game?
9. Would you recommend the game to your friends?
10. Did you like the zombie hunter?
11. Did you find the hopsital relevant?
Results
The overall impression that I got was that the narrative itself was okay but I wasn't making my point clear.
People tended to go to the zoo first since it was the first one on the list even though order wasn't important
and most agreed that it gave them a feel for the game. I have to change the monkey in the middle scene as it was mostly "okay"
and "could be better" so I will be adding something more complex to it. Most people played between 7-10 minutes and wished there
was a little more engagement (i.e dialogue). The puns seemed to make people groan (mission accomplished) but most people missed the point
of the random tangents. However, they did seem to understand that the whole point of the game was that it was a tangent in itself
because it ever got to a point. Once they reached one ending though, most people did not try to play again. A couple people found the
convenience store boring. All of the people agreed that the hopsital scene was pointless and didn't really fit with the weird, eclectic
feel of the rest of the game and that it felt like "a random cop out for the story." Also, they said they would make the beginning shorter
and that the riddle game with Death was not enjoyable because they couldn't input their own answers so it kind of gave away the
right answer immediately. I will delete the riddle game out of the final product since it, like the hospital, seems to be taking away from the game.
They said they might recommend it to a friend (out of politeness maybe?) and would change the choices at each level so there would be more options.
Notes:
I clearly am not as funny or amusing as I think I am. I need to add more tangents to emphasize that the whole point of the game
is that there is no point, making the people kind of feel like zombies themselves as they mindlessly go through these menial,
pointless tasks. I also need to scale back on the puns, maybe limiting myself to 2-3 per zone rather than 1 per page. I'm a little
disappointed that I had to narrow the scope so much because I think it would have made the game have a different feel but the hopsital
scene really didn't fit with anything except that I felt I needed a big plot twist at some point (which was a big failure overall). I think
I should take Death out of the game because she doesn't really fit any story line as of now because she doesn't fit into any of the rest
of the tangents of the story. But I am not sure because the people tended to think she was kind of amusing and that it helped them realize that the
game itself was as disjointed as Jake's zombie body (HA!) .
(For those who have only played the game without the hospital scene: The hopsital scene was supposed to be a big twist where you found out that
you've been dead for years now and that you can't remember because Death keeps wiping your memory. Death was supposed to be the villain and you were going
to have to get your allies together to overthrow Death and you would become the next Death.)