Update: Thanks for your time and comments everybody. The test is now closed. I will post results when I have processed the data!
Can you spare 10 minutes to [game] science?
I am working on some experimental games, and I am looking for testers.
The test consists of you playing a game in your browser and answering some questions. The test is anonymous and takes around 10 minutes to complete.
Thanks for your time!
-Jesper
Always a pleasure to donate to [Game] Science
This is embarrassing… again I’m having problems installing Java. (The only available apple download is apparently for OS 10.4.8+ whilst I’m 10.4.11… it should work, right?)
Otherwise, I would have loved to be a ‘subject’.
Maybe that could be a separate study – how many people find the installation of Java too confusing/difficult?
Bez, I guess that should work (I thought all Macs came with Java?)
In my opinion, Sun (who makes Java) should spend more time making installation straightforward.
Thanks!
I had a rather different experience with Java — it worked for a change. I would have thought Flash was the web standard for games now? ;).
Lovely little game Jesper. Of course, I was rather bad at it but it’s a nice twist on pac man (which I never passed at level 2, by the way). Perhaps you can put it online at another place for people who’d like to play again?
I’m looking forward to see what you make of the data you gather.
Tech worked first time for me with the latest java and Safari on OS X.
A witty hybrid game, with ‘characters’ or objects from Pacman and Asteroids making cameo appearances. And is the player’s character inspired by Snake or Centipede?
It reminds me of when Magnum would appear in Murder She Wrote (or was it the other way around?) I guess this sort of thing happens all the time in video games. (Starting with Mario’s spinoff ‘career’ after Donkey Kong) I’m just not ludoliterate enough not to notice.
A bit too frustrating though. Some kind of ‘juicy*’ bonus sequence for length of snake at level end would have added a lot to my motivation.
*Must use correct jargon.
I had a bug when playing the game. I guess there were supposed to be some messages appearing but when I was playing, they showed only a split of a second and disappeared immediately. I could only grasp some isolated word like something about “summarizing half-life”. I use a PC and Firefox. Actually I played it in the NewsFox plug in for Firefox.
Oh yeah and the sound effects got on my nerves pretty quickly. Was that part of the test?
Krystian, that sounds like an earlier blog post showing through – some weird interaction between your different plugins.
There are many things that could be done with this game of course, I will tell more once I have collected enough data.
Glad to have participated, looking forward to the results. It was very interesting to see what sorts of ideas the survey presupposed — some of the questions seemed intentionally laden with assumptions, others perhaps less intentionally.
I see from the comments that I’m not the only person who was irked by the sound. In the future, it might also be helpful to have a little loop playing at the opening screen, which would give player-subjects a chance to calibrate sound levels or hit Mute *before* the game started.
Argh, sorry for the double post, but I also wanted to note that the white text for score and lives (were there other stats in the display?) were nigh impossible for me to see.
Thanks everybody!
I agree that many things (especially the sounds) are quite unpolished as is. Perhaps there will be another version down the road…
Hi Jesper, if it’s not too late, I’ll play!
Thanks Alex, but I am processing the data. Will publish the results soon.