Fractionauts Playtest with 4th graders

On May 14th, we the RIT Humanitarian Free & Open Source Software class took a trip to Allendale Columbia School to have the 4th graders playtest our educational games.

Fractionauts, the game our team was working on, received great success! It was nominated for IGN Game of the Year

Setting up the gamespace

Fractionauts!

Some kid reached level 150. He's getting a badge.

Feedbacks from kids:

• The level progression in the beginning is too slow. There's a lot of 1/2 in the first couple levels, and that was too easy to grab their interest. The fraction addition could be introduced earlier too - they don't start coming in till level 13.
• Level generator that takes over since level 40 can use some difficulty tweaking
• Bug Report! Sometimes the level generator generates multiple ways to get the right fuel amount, but only recognizes one of them as correct answer.

Feedbacks from Observation:

• The current mouse icon replacement is a little too big, as players often mistake the middle of the icon as where the cursor is at. The hitbox for some buttons, such as the most important LAUNCH, is too small too, causing players and especially kids to get confused.
• the BACK button needs to be more obvious. White text plz?
• The positioning for fuel dividers are a little off near the top.

Finally, let's just take a moment and appreciate the fact that our fellow classmate, Danny Shumway, had a successful playtest of his horror game Eyes Open with 4th graders.