Our playtesters ranged from 18-26 years old and were a mix of male and female players. Some had experience playing board games before and some had very little interest in board games.
When playtesting our game we found that at first the combat system was a bit confusing. It was a rock-paper-scissors type of combat with certain equipment combinations beating others. This however caused a big concern with game balancing and our playtesters found the system itself fairly daunting.
So we went back to the combat design. Instead of equipment being good against one thing and bad against another we decided to make it a simple bonus system. This equipment will provide a bonus to your dice roll during combat. This was found to be much simpler and let the game flow much more. Play testers preferred the new combat system to the old and it made balancing the game much easier.
Aside from the combat, there was little else that needed balancing. A couple of issues, for example hyperdrive making it too difficult to defeat a player, were tweaked in order to make the game easier and more enjoyable.
Play testing the game at the beginning found that a game would last around 2 to 3 hours. However this could be put down to many things, a lack of familiarity with the game system, a convoluted combat system (that was later fixed). However after a couple of fixes to the system we found game time went down to about 1 to 2 hours on a full size board with smaller boards cutting the game time down even more. This was indication that the concept behind an adjustable board would work. Smaller board meant a smaller, less time consuming game.
By taking on board what our playtesters said we ended up with a game that played very tightly, it didn't drag on and everyone enjoyed it. One constant piece of feedback from every playtester was: "This is a fun game".
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