This playtest went much better than last time, I think this level is done if not very close to done. I am very happy with how it went. I used new playtesters this time as well as a fourth one who played my level last time. All of them were close friends, but the three new ones had never played Mega Man Maker before, which was good for testing.
They all thoroughly enjoyed the level and it took them each around 10 minutes to complete the level, which was our goal. The times were 9:43, 10:30, 10:54, and 8:17. The players reported an easy flow of the level that slowly taught them the game. They all liked the placement of the checkpoints which allowed them to feel our parts of the level before playing. I have never played the original Mega Man before, so I don't know if this is how the original game handles their levels, but it worked well in mine.
I changed some of the more difficult obstacles from last time to make them less daunting. I first taught the player how to slide before giving them a difficult sliding obstacle, as well as added a new one later in the level so the level would still have challenge.
This is the new sliding section I added. The older one was more difficult and included a gap, which was impossible to jump and had to be slid over. While I knew I could slide over the gap, most testers were unaware of that mechanic, and ended up dying and becoming frustrated. I could've added a checkpoint for them to figure it out, or slowly eased them into the sliding mechanic, and so I chose the latter. I think this worked very well for the players and players didn't die here at all. Later I will show how I incorporated the slide in other parts of the level so that it wasn't too easy.
I also made the boss level more difficult and interesting, so there were places to hide from the boss, where before you couldn't escape his grips.
If there was one part that could be improved, it's this boss level, and that's because only two out of the four players actually used the platforms above to hide from the boss. I wouldn't consider that a complete success, and if only half of the players use something in a game, it likely shouldn't be there taking up space at all, or at least for a game this simple. I can try and make a more obvious shape of platforms to incentivize the player to use the platforms next time, or I can make it more difficult to dodge attacks on the lower levels, as staying on the bottom and fighting the boss wasn't too hard at all.
This was the first part of my new parkour section of the level. This helped teach the player how far they could jump over gaps. No one got frustrated at this part, but I still feel it was necessary to show the player the extent of their jumping abilities, or at least remind them.
This next section was good because it forced the player to control their jumps, some jumps had overhangs meaning the player couldn't jump as high as they could, instead they had to lightly tap it to get through. It even includes that final third sliding section for the player, which seemed to be the most difficult part for all of the testers. This was my favorite part, as there was a checkpoint shortly before, allowing players to retry and memorize how to do this. It was fun watching players spend time on it while also not getting too frustrated. This also prepares the player well to fight the boss, whos attacks can only be dodged with jumping and sliding.
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