You designed a healer character: flowing robes, gentle colors, a staff with a glowing crystal. During your first playtest, three players immediately identify her as the damage dealer. "The staff looks powerful," one explains. This is exactly why you test, to identify the mismatches between your intention and players' perception. You act on the feedback, reduce the staff's size, replace the crystal with a soft green glow, and add a small cross symbol near the grip. By the next session, players instantly recognize her role. Testing gave you the insight you couldn't see on your own.
In this video, Celia Hodent, PhD, Game UX Strategist and Author of the best-selling book The Gamer's Brain, explains why testing is the only reliable way to verify that players perceive your designs as you intended.
Test Early, Test the Right Things
You already know you need to test. The next step is deciding what to test and when to test it. Here's how to approach it:
You can test icons and HUD elements with paper prototypes or digital sketches before anything is polished. At this stage, you're not judging whether they look good. You're checking whether players understand what they mean. Show players the icon and ask what they think it represents. If their answer is different from what you intended, that tells you something useful. The icon may not be communicating clearly enough yet. When that happens, resist the urge to explain the icon to players. Change the icon.
You can also test character design. In team-based games, players may need to recognize roles like tank, healer, or DPS quickly. Show players the character design and ask what role they would expect that character to play. If players look at your heavily armored tank and assume he is the damage dealer because his sword is oversized, that's useful feedback. It means the design may be sending the wrong signal and you need to adjust it.
Environment design needs its own set of questions. Can players tell tall grass from regular grass and understand that it has a different function, such as hiding? Can they distinguish a door that opens from one that doesn't? Can they identify what's breakable and what gives reliable cover? Can they tell where to go next? Any information your game needs players to read correctly is worth testing before it's baked into a finished build.
Sound design follows the same logic. If players interpret your lion growl as a cat meowing, they won't respond the way you expected. Test how players interpret sounds too.
Test With the Right People
Who you test with matters as much as what you test. If you're building an RPG, don't recruit players who primarily play puzzle games. The visual language differs significantly between genres, and your testers need to share the same symbol fluency as your target audience. Also, include players with disabilities to ensure your designs work across the full range of people who'll actually play your game.
This range of perspectives is useful because different players bring different cultural references, gaming histories, and ways of constructing meaning from the same visual information. That variation helps you find out where your design holds and where it breaks.
The Take Away
Testing is essential because you can't perceive your design the way players perceive it. You already know what each icon, character, sound, or environment cue is supposed to mean. Players don'thave that context, and different players may bring different experiences to the same design. Testing helps you check whether there's a mismatch between what you intended and what players perceived, so you can adjust the design while the game is still in development.
References and Where to Learn More
Want more? If you haven't already, sign up for Game UX Design: The Ultimate Guide to learn directly from Celia Hodent, PhD, former Fortnite UX Director, and author of the best-seller The Gamer's Brain.
Read The Gamer's Brain by Celia Hodent.
Watch the How to Design for the Human Mind: Cognitive Science for UX Master Class by Celia Hodent.
Watch the How to Become a Games User Researcher Master Class by Steve Bromley, Games Researcher and Author.
Watch the AI for Game UX: Speed Up Research, Ideas, and Prototypes Master Class by Om Tandon, UX Design Leader at Nordeus (Zynga/Take-Two).
Watch the Level Up Your Career: How to Land a Job in the Game Industry Master Class with Om Tandon, UX Design Leader at Nordeus (Zynga/Take-Two).
Watch the UI Design for Games: Starter Edition Master Class with Stéfano Girardelli, Senior Visual Designer at Wildlife Studios.
Hero image: © Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0
