Board Game Playtest Review
So we did the playtest on Tuesday night. All things considered, we got going pretty quickly and into setup. Three of the eight players had never played before, and two more (I believe) hadn't played the last time... so there was a lot of learning and/or catchup being done, and on a fast track.
Prep time probably ran to 12 hours or so. I had done a huge chunk of work on game pieces about three weeks ago, trying to get it ready to take to a party to perhaps play. I got all the pieces laid out in InDesign, but then didn't have enough time to print and cut them. So, on Tues, I had to run out to the office supply place soon as I was up and mobile, buy heavy 110# paper and full page uncut label paper, fly home, print to the label pages, stick them to the heavy paper, and *hand cut* 9 pages worth of game pieces. Did I mention they're about .75 x .75 inches? It took me three hours of constant cutting. I barely made it to the playtest in time. Phew!
I played banker and stayed out of the game itself. I did my usual crack-the-whip routine, keeping track of whose play it was and calling it out, trying to keep everything moving. Without going into the play by play, here's what I learned from this latest round of testing:
The biggest challenge with the game is speeding up play. There are a lot of elements to keep track of, and a lot of options for strategy and the like. But there are also too many little steps to get through a given team's turn. It means that a Round takes far too long (45 minutes or so on Tues), so that we only get 4-6 Rounds in before most people have to pack up and go. My goal is for a game to normally take 6-8 hours. At the current game setup, winning would take 12-16 hours. Not acceptable by a long shot.
So I'm doing what I can to trim down redundancy, remove unnecessary game elements... basically, smooth it down bit by bit until play feels "fast" enough that people don't mind waiting for their turn to come around again. Hopefully, an experienced team will get their turn time down from 10-12 minutes to 5-7 minutes.
Getting there means making the game simpler. I hate doing it, because I like complexity as a general rule. But as is, the game doesn't work for me. Ah well.
So I found 15 things to change, to hopefully address the problems we encountered (from the small adjustments up to the removal of one of the two types of resources in the game).
It's hard to say when the next playtest will be. Ideally, I'd like to find a whole Sunday or something akin, where people would play from like noon until finish, to really have a game develop toward victory conditions, but my schedule doesn't afford it. Stupid schedule.
On the bright side, I've already written the changes into the rules. Now all I have to do is rewrite the 300 or so cards, print them out into a working format, and I'm ready to run it again.
It's a good thing I love doing this.
-a-
Prep time probably ran to 12 hours or so. I had done a huge chunk of work on game pieces about three weeks ago, trying to get it ready to take to a party to perhaps play. I got all the pieces laid out in InDesign, but then didn't have enough time to print and cut them. So, on Tues, I had to run out to the office supply place soon as I was up and mobile, buy heavy 110# paper and full page uncut label paper, fly home, print to the label pages, stick them to the heavy paper, and *hand cut* 9 pages worth of game pieces. Did I mention they're about .75 x .75 inches? It took me three hours of constant cutting. I barely made it to the playtest in time. Phew!
I played banker and stayed out of the game itself. I did my usual crack-the-whip routine, keeping track of whose play it was and calling it out, trying to keep everything moving. Without going into the play by play, here's what I learned from this latest round of testing:
The biggest challenge with the game is speeding up play. There are a lot of elements to keep track of, and a lot of options for strategy and the like. But there are also too many little steps to get through a given team's turn. It means that a Round takes far too long (45 minutes or so on Tues), so that we only get 4-6 Rounds in before most people have to pack up and go. My goal is for a game to normally take 6-8 hours. At the current game setup, winning would take 12-16 hours. Not acceptable by a long shot.
So I'm doing what I can to trim down redundancy, remove unnecessary game elements... basically, smooth it down bit by bit until play feels "fast" enough that people don't mind waiting for their turn to come around again. Hopefully, an experienced team will get their turn time down from 10-12 minutes to 5-7 minutes.
Getting there means making the game simpler. I hate doing it, because I like complexity as a general rule. But as is, the game doesn't work for me. Ah well.
So I found 15 things to change, to hopefully address the problems we encountered (from the small adjustments up to the removal of one of the two types of resources in the game).
It's hard to say when the next playtest will be. Ideally, I'd like to find a whole Sunday or something akin, where people would play from like noon until finish, to really have a game develop toward victory conditions, but my schedule doesn't afford it. Stupid schedule.
On the bright side, I've already written the changes into the rules. Now all I have to do is rewrite the 300 or so cards, print them out into a working format, and I'm ready to run it again.
It's a good thing I love doing this.
-a-