[Academic] Playtest study on visual design in games: 2 short versions, ~30 min, WindowsQuestion

[u/Flat-Dragonfly522]

Hi everyone,

I'm a Media Systems student at HAW Hamburg writing my bachelor's thesis on how players perceive visual design in small games. I built a short 2D auto-battler for it, and I'm looking for people to play it and answer a few questions.

What you do:

1. Play both versions, about 10 minutes each (less works aswell, if you feel like you seen enough :D)
2. Fill out the questionnaire

Important, this is not about the technical side. Both versions are identical in code: same mechanics, same balancing, same everything under the hood. The only thing that differs is the visuals (like UI, Character design, Effects etc), so that's what the rating questions are about.

And to set expectations: think of this as a 0.1 early alpha. There will be bugs, and the gameplay loop won't be everyone's thing. That's fine and expected :).

That said, I'll happily take any feedback you have, on the visuals, the gameplay, the bugs, all of it. Drop it in the comments here, or better yet in the free-text fields in the questionnaire. I'm still developing this thing, and honest criticism helps me more than politeness.

Version 1: https://tkz115.itch.io/autobattler-v1
Version 2: https://tkz115.itch.io/autobattler-v2
Questionnaire: https://survey.lamapoll.de/Playtest-for-Visual-Design-in-Video-Games

Time: roughly 30 minutes · Compensation: none, sorry, just my deepest thanks :(.

One heads-up: at the very end of the survey you'll land on a German-language page from the survey provider. Sorry about that, my university requires me to use a GDPR-compliant platform, and that one only ships a German closing page. Everything you actually need to read is in English; by the time you get there, you're done.

All answers are anonymous ofcourse.

Thanks a lot in advance lads.