At the end of each puzzle, each playtester was presented with an opportunity to rate the ‘fun’ and ‘difficulty’ of the puzzle.
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The playtesters would play through the whole series of puzzles.
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It was then playtested with game design students at a local college before proceeding to full art production. Matthew VanDevander: DOs and DON'Ts of Honest Puzzle Game DesignĪll of the puzzles in The Turing Test were ‘blocked out’ in white boxes first. For the ethos behind The Turing Test’s level design please watch this video: Most puzzle designers will tell you that it took them a long time to design all the puzzles in their videogame. I’d also note puzzle design is much easier in 2D than 3D. It is a very arduous process and sometimes weeks may pass with no fruit. In reality, more than 77 puzzles were created but many were combined and removed. That’s 77 puzzles in about 250 work days. It took, perhaps, one year of work to create all the puzzles in The Turing Test (including implementation). My single piece of advice to any puzzle game designer would be: come up with an interesting mechanic and explore it deeply. We cut costs where we could by cleverly designing a ‘small production,’ but we created extra optional content and depth for players who wanted to explore deeper into the world we created. We worked a lot of overtime to make sure the game had lots of content and would be a good purchase for our players. You see this widely reflected in critic and player reviews. Despite being efficiently made, the game was never ‘cheap’. In a puzzle game every color, every shape, and every sound has to be scrutinized. We did, however, invest large amounts of time into producing a very clear and deliberate game. This, however, creates a focused pair of characters which fits the game. Outside of cinematics, third person characters only have idle animations. There are only 2 character models, both are female.
There are only 2 scenes in which the characters deliver dialogue with facial animation. The story was written to require only 2 voice actors and 2 supporting voice actors, we also used members of the studio for certain characters. The story portions of the game were also designed to be greater than the sum of their parts. It may sound cynical, but The Turing Test was primarily designed to be a ‘financially successful game’ first and after was designed to be received well by game critics. After that process, a larger team came on board as the game entered full production.
The game spent a large portion of time being developed by a one-man team to keep the costs low while puzzles and mechanics were produced. Money was only spent where it would increase the quality of the product." "The Turing Test is a game that is primarily a success of the production. Money was only spent where it would increase the quality of the product. The Turing Test is a game that is primarily a success of the production.
It's first person to save money on animation.We made several other decisions to keep the game’s budget lean: Once per chapter, the player is rewarded with detailed interactive art set pieces that help tell the story. We chose to break up the modular nature of the game with ‘story rooms’ and drastic lighting. The downside to a modular workflow is that it creates a homogeneous look. If each room was individually modeled the budget would have skyrocketed. This enabled the puzzles to not be constrained by the art. We decided that, to Portal and other indie puzzle games, we would have a modular workflow. Design: One singular puzzle mechanic explored deeply.Marketing: Have the main character to serve as the game's icon.It has a 'Very Positive' rating on Steam and scored an average of 76/100 on Metacritic across all platforms.Īt the start of The Turing Test’s development we had 4 core goals: The project was 18 months from start to finish. The team size was 1 person for 3 months, 6 people for 9 months and 9 people for a further 6 months. It was developed on the budget of approximately £110,000. It has been released on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Steam. It was brilliantly published and marketed by Square Enix Collective. As a product, The Turing Test is about to break £1M in revenue for Bulkhead Interactive.
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