User-Focused Research on Into The Breach

Into The Breach is a game that combines the strategy and roguelike genre. The game has many possible actions, affects, and levels that results to massive amounts of information being presented to the player. I wanted to analyze how well a player can absorb and retain the information presented to them. I also looked if play-testers would avoid or misunderstand certain features of the game.
 

 I structured the research sessions by asking participants to complete 1 island or until failure, whichever one came first. I also created key questions to analyze the player's understanding of gameplay mechanics.

 

These questions are:

- What was your primary strategy in the levels?​

- How influential were the bonus objectives to your strategy?

- Were there any factors within a level that changed your approach to your strategy?

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These questions focused on specific parts of the game: the gameplay loop, the bonus objectives, and the level dynamics of the game.

The results of this research was varied for each question. Some players focused on protecting objectives rather than their troops. Additionally, players would often overlook or not consider bonus objectives while completing levels. Lastly, very few play-testers considered environmental hazards when forming a strategy for the turn.

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The full research presentation is included in the document link below.