Hi Steven! I just played this with my friend, it was fun and I can see the potential but it was too hard to continue until the end. Here is my feedback in no particular order:
Context
- Played this on a call over the internetz.
- I was the grandma, my friend was the grandson.
- Played for around 10-15 mins, before I gave up.
Gameplay thoughts
- This is my main pain point, I was constantly scrolling up and down to find responses. Sometimes even searching didn’t help me to find an appropriate option. It would’ve been easier if they were grouped together to sections. For example, utterances, settings, login field, other. These are just arbitrary groups I came up with, you can come up with better ones.
- I didn’t know there was an ‘uhh’ option to stall my friend, until I came across it by chance after scrolling quite far down.
- The scroll position is maintained which is fine for normal cases. But if you then use the search, this could give the illusion of no results (if you already had scrolled down previously). If the search did in fact give results, you have to scroll up to see them.
- This game is better played if the Grandma has more time to read through all the possible responses first, or is the whole point that they have to search and click? I would like to alleviate the problem of grandson waiting too long for a response.
Instructions need more clarity
- I’m not sure what the dictation thing was about. I followed the instructions to turn on “Getting to know you” but the game was forever saying ‘Waiting for player one to speak’ or something. Even though he was speaking throughout. UPDATE: I did not watch the in-person video until now. So THAT’S what it is, it might be worth explaining explicitly that is only for in-person.
- I recommend adding the same instructions into the game (as you’ve written here). There is a chance someone might not properly read this page or even the README file at all.
- I didn’t know that starting the game would start grandma’s voice (what she said about getting hacked), I had to restart the game so my friend could hear that part. Perhaps this should be manually initiated.
- I had no idea what the sad emoji button did, so I pressed it not realizing it’s like another way to potentially end the story.
Are we the right audience?
- Me and my friend pretty much never use facebook, so we didn’t even have the picture in our minds on how the UI looks. It has been a while. The responses seem like they were created for someone who kind of has an idea of what to look for.
- For us, the first thing that he asked me ‘Grandma, what’s your email?’. I struggled to find a response for that. You may want to consider what happens when people veer off-script. Or play test with more people? (I dunno)
Other
- The ringing noise at the beginning was super loud, I had my headphones on at first and it blasted into my ears.
- The response about cooking dinner for grandpa was funny, but we didn’t expect it to go on for that long! lol.
- Zoom is not the only online chat program, maybe you can just replace ‘zoom’ with the wording ‘any online calling app’ or even over the phone.
Thank you for creating this. I am happy to try again if it gets any updates, sad I couldn’t play until we reached a resolution!
P.S. The Player count under ‘More information’ for this page says Singleplayer.