How do you test and improve the quality and consistency of online story driven games?

1 Define your story goals

Before you start testing your game, you need to have a clear vision of what you want your story to achieve. What are the main themes, messages, and emotions you want to convey? How do you want your players to interact with your characters, choices, and consequences? How do you measure your story's success and impact? Defining your story goals will help you set the scope and criteria for your testing process.

2 Use a story map

A story map is a visual tool that helps you organize and structure your story elements, such as scenes, events, actions, and dialogues. It also helps you identify the dependencies, gaps, and branches in your story flow. A story map can help you test your game by showing you the different paths and outcomes that your players can experience, and how they align with your story goals. You can use online tools like Twine or Inklewriter to create and test your story maps.

4 Test your story content

Your story content is the actual text, audio, and visuals that make up your story. It includes your dialogues, descriptions, sounds, music, images, and animations. Testing your story content is important for ensuring that your game is engaging, consistent, and polished. You need to check for spelling, grammar, punctuation, tone, voice, style, clarity, coherence, and accuracy. You also need to check for continuity, consistency, and compatibility across different platforms, devices, and languages. You can use tools like Grammarly, Hemingway, or ProWritingAid to check and improve your story content.

5 Test your story feedback

Your story feedback is the way your game communicates with your players and responds to their actions and choices. It includes your user interface, user experience, game mechanics, rewards, consequences, and analytics. Testing your story feedback is essential for ensuring that your game is intuitive, interactive, and satisfying. You need to check for usability, accessibility, functionality, performance, and balance. You also need to check for player engagement, retention, and satisfaction. You can use tools like PlaytestCloud, UserTesting, or Google Analytics to test and optimize your story feedback.