Playtesting 2013-10-29

Today we had another group playtest our game again to get further feedback. This time we went with two artifacts on the scene. What happened was that two players went back and forth around the square with the artifact, uneager to be the first to collect it. This made us conclude even more that it is very unmotivating to grab the artifact early as you’ll then be targeted and vulnerable. We have to make it more compelling to acquire the artifact as soon as possible.

The playtesters thought that there was a lack of control and interaction with other players. You could not affect players on the other side of the map at all and if they were winning then you could not stop them. We then discussed the possibility of various action cards and what actions they could potentially have to change the gameplay. No definite solutions were brought up and we’ll have to discuss this further during a group meeting.

A few (almost) concrete changes are to made also. For discarding cards we said that you could discard any number of cards in your hand, and receive the same amount of new ones, because player would’nt want to discard a hand which may hold a significant card while at the same time they’re unable to progress efficiently.

Another change we decided upon was that when you push another player, the pusher may choose where to put the other player, within a certain radial range dependant on the number of steps taken. This helps reduce confusion as to where you’re supposed to push the player back to when one of the involved has an artifact. It also eliminated the loosly defined rules such as where to put a player if there is a tile on which a player cannot stand on.

As far as our initial aesthetic goals succeeded there was a somewhat lack of consistent excitement and strategic leeway. As such we said that we need to further develop the stategic moment and it a core factor in this game.

2nd playtesting session

Today we had another playtesting session with the rest of the groups from the course. Beforehands we had printed out a new board layout, cards with new combination of colors, and created figures to act as the players. We ran the game through one time before setting off to let others test our game.

As with last time we presented them with the board, the cards, the rules and other game pieces. The rules had been reworked to be more detailed and comprehensive but this time we also engaged more actively in explaining the rules as the testers played along.

On our new board we had put two small paths along the edges of the map. The thought behind it was that if you had the cards needed to progress through those paths (as the paths only used certain color combinations) then it would be faster and safer to do so than to fight in the center path. The result was different though, as it was felt to be too tempting to enter, but too cumbersome and inferior to progress through.

Another thing we released more now than before was that there is a high demand for a system were you can change card, for example in a instance where you are unable to progress forward and have to backtrack of stay. We been thinking about a few ways so that a player can discard cards and pick up new which we’ll have to discuss further.

Unfortunately we didn’t feel that some of the new, dynamic systems we’ve added were mature enough to be tested so they had to be scraped for the playtesting session, but we’ve come up with more intresting and active elements to the game and we hope to refine and implement them before the next playtesting session.

//Kenth

The Meeting with Marcus

The meeting with Marcus went well in my opinion and we left the room with a few new ideas that could help us achieve some of our aesthetic goals.

The feedback we got were:

*The obstacles were abundant because of the fact that they only occupied one tile of the board. And the players were not hindered by it because they can move diagonally.

*We should think about adding another mechanic to make the game more dynamic.

*Think of a tactic that could counteract the tactic of staying behind to take the artefact from the player returning.

He gave us the idea to have water that could flood the board and make it more stressful for the players to hurry before the board would fill up with water. Maybe even make it so that if people did not manage to get out of the way of the water’s progression then nobody wins.

I believe that this provoked our brains a bit which made us see the potential of using this in our board game and it also proves once again that new eyes on a project is very useful. It might indeed make our board game more enjoyable than it is now.

// Emelie

Fourth Meeting

This meeting was yesterday since we had some time to kill before we had our meeting with Marcus. We tested our prototype again to see how it worked and we now know what we should do for our second prototype. We wrote down a list on what needed to be done and decided then and there that we should divide up the work.

I would like to mention that we  previously had discussed to have cards with three colours on them in order to make it easier to get out of a pinch i.e. if a player had the same colour on every card and so forth. However, we decided to add tiles that had more colours on them instead, and add cards with different colour combinations.

The new combinations are as follows:

The original colour combos: Orange/blue, Yellow/Purple and Red/Green.
The added colour combos: Yellow/Red, Green/Orange and Blue/Purple.

We are also discussing whether or not to have cards that can affect certain aspects of the “combat” when pushing players. Or add symbols on certain coloured cards that show that during that turn you cannot push this player as long as that card is on top of that players discard pile.

The things we decided to focus on this week were: 

1. A bigger and more balanced board.
2. New cards, with the new combinations.
3. The Design document.
4. An outline on the rules and manual.
5. Game pieces that will represent the players.

These were divided amongst us. And we all have our own goals to complete this week, and we can’t wait to get more feedback on our new prototype this week 🙂

// Emelie

Weekly Reflections Uploaded

Our reflections are now uploaded on a separate page. 

Play testing and Feedback (other groups: comment on this post)

For the people that tested our game we provided them with the rules, a board, cards and markers to represent the players.

 

First group playtesting

The first group that tested our game felt that the game was frustrating mainly because our board was a bit small and the colours were not that balanced on the board. On huge part of the frustration was the cards because if you got the same colour cards then it was difficult to move at all.

The rules were a bit confusing because it did not say that you could move diagonally, so we definitely have to work on the rules to make it more clear.

 

Second group playtesting

Much like the first group the second group interpreted some rules differently than we had first intended them to. Other things we noticed were that the colors on the cards were sometimes confusing as orange and red looked very alike on them, making it very hard for more color-blind people to play the game.

It also became apparent that the level design of the board needs some major reworking to balance the color chains and change the narrower middle part as player tends to stay there for too long or stay there and wait for a player to bring the artifact. This is also due to not clarifying the rules better.

We found that some player often found themselves stuck with the same color combo on their hand, unable to advance forward. We have a few thought on how to fix this like adding more color combination and different amount of colors on each card, or squares with more colors on them.

One thing that happended that we hadn’t seen or tested before was that a player knocked back a player, who then landed on a square where there already was a square. The rules on the knock-back has to be redefined but for now we just went with the ‘chain reaction’ solution where the player just gets knocked back by the player who was knocked back.

//Emelie & Kenth

Second and Third meeting

Yesterday and today we have been working to get our system testable with a prototype. We talked about different ways of creating this movement system using our cards.

Second Meeting

Our first idea was to use the cards and move the player that had that colour on their representation in the game e.g. if a card with the colours orange, red and yellow was played then the players with that colour had to move the amount of steps that the card displayed. However, we thought that it would have been too random of a system that we scrapped it and moved on.

We then tried to make it like a betting game, that you decided in the beginning which colour to bet on and trying to make that one win. But that seemed just like the idea above but with other circumstances.

The idea that we decided to continue on the three coloured cards and a board with different coloured squares. And the player had to choose a card and then move on the matching colours on the board as long as the colours are the same as the ones on the card. If there is no more matching colours on the board but you still have moves left, the moves becomes invalid and your turn ends. We also implemented a pushing mechanism but that needs some work.

Third Meeting

We decided quickly that we only should have 2 colours on the cards to make it more difficult to move over the board. We also decided to have an artefact that the players should get and then return to the finish line. However, the player’s that don’t have the artefact now move in on the player that has it. If they manages to push the player, using our pushing system then they gain control of the artefact and they can move towards the finish line. Making it an intense and competitive experience at the end.

Until our next meeting we are going to finish the test board and produce some cards to make it testable for other groups.

Rules for testing the current prototype:
3-4 players
Move towards the artifact with the help of the coloured cards.
You can only push other players if you end directly on the same square.
The pushed player end up on the pushers starting position that turn.

Here is our first prototype for the board:

 

//Emelie

First meeting

Today we had our first meeting and we decided quickly on the aesthetic goal for it.

Aesthetic goal: We thought of something that would be exciting, intense, competitive and strategic.

I believe that this could be a challenge but with a clear aesthetic feel then it could become easier to get there.

After we decided on the goal, then we started to discuss the systems that we might want to work with. We came back directly to the system that we created a few weeks back and how we could use that in some sort of movement system. We thought that it would be intriguing to try and make the cards to replace dice, making the choices more strategic than based on the probability of the dice.

We decided to write our progress in this blog instead of a wiki.

Our goal for next week is to have something playable with our movement system using our cards(see example below) and objects to move using that system.

Until next time!

// Emelie