Boardgame - First public playtest
At the beginning of this month I went to an event in Copenhagen where developers could show up with a game mockup/prototype and meet people willing to playtest.
For this playtest there were some questions I needed answers to:
Q: How does the core gameplay feel?
A: The playtesters who did get to try the game told me that they really enjoyed how the playing felt, despite the hiccups they encountered and which I had expected. The core seems good, now I need to tune that towards a basic version that deals with some of the issues it currently has.
The result of the 2nd game. The river team managing to narrowly win in a very close game as both teams ended up fighting over making a connection in the top right corner of the board.
Q: There were some issues with “blocking moves” where placing pieces in a certain way makes it impossible to place one of the current tiles on a specific adjacent space.
A: I managed to host 2 test games. For the first one, all the different types of pieces were split evenly between the two team bags. This I adjusted for the 2nd test game, so the 4way and 3way pieces for a team were only available in that teams own bag. I will be printing more of the pieces that have connections for both teams on them, and try a version where each team only has a few turns and straights for their own team in their bags. This is intended to make the routes on the board less blockable. I might need to come up with another type of piece that allows for special ruling near the edges, as there will still be turning pieces that can block opponents.
Q: The edges of the board is an issue with the current rules, as it was too easy if a player pulled a turning piece for the opposing team from their own bag.
A: This is a problem that is partially connected to the above one. I willl be trying out two ways of approaching a solution. The first will be as mentioned above, with changing the numbers of the specific tile types. The second will be including some kind of randomized way in which it becomes possible to turn a piece on the board.
I will be returning to the event again with changes to try and test out how they play, and potentially try to figure out rules for if people want to play a 1v1 variant.