Dragon Race VR Testing

During the testing I mainly wanted to focus on the movement aspect of my game. It was really important to me that controlling the dragon felt as natural as controlling a dragon could be. That's why the main questions that I wanted to be answered during the playtest were relevant to the movement in the game.

Testing questions:

• Does the controlling of the dragon feel good?

• Does the way you hold and move around the rein feel realistic?

• Is it clear where you need to go?

• Is the environment fitting to the experience?

Testing procedures

• The player is instructed that they need to grab the white object (rein) to be able to control the dragon using motions and that it's a race.

• The player gets to play the game without VR.

• Note down if the player won.

• Test the game in VR.

• Note down if the player won.

• Ask for general feedback.

Testing results

I've tested the game with 2 playtesters, those being Rutger and Daan.

The players thought that the controlling of the dragon with the rein was pretty good, however one of the players thought that the rotation speed of the dragon was a bit too slow. After observing both playtesters I agreed with that statement so I tweaked that.

One of the playtesters had to play the game a 2nd time before he got the full grasp of the movement, the other one understood it pretty quickly.

One of the rings was pretty hard to see for both players, so it was hard to know that you needed to go there.

All the players thought that the environment fitted and added to the experience, and they liked the core gameplay.

One of the playtesters won 1 game with mouse controls and lost 1 very close game in VR. The other player would've lost both games, but he won the VR one thanks to a bug (where the enemy dragon didn't register the finish line properly) that has now been fixed.

Conclusion

While most of the matches were lost, the players really seemed to enjoy the game. I think that the slight increase in horizontal rotate speed will help players get past the difficult corners more frequently. Furthermore, one of the playtesters suggested that the beginning of the race should be a little bit easier so that players get a better grasp of the controls before they need to make difficult turns. And the player wanted some more time to take in the environment and the full model of the dragon that he was riding on.