Capstone Project : Playtesting 2

 

For this round of playtesting I will be utilizing the online platform "Owlbear Rodeo" (An online tabletop service usually used for TTRPGs) to play my game. My game Isn't particularly built to be played online however as my friends live so far away I'm not able to play with them in person. This did mean I had some hurdles to overcome in trying to figure out how to get the platform to work with my mechanics but I was able to figure something out.

[Before recording I made sure to get everyone's consent to be included in the video]

In the end, my friend Oli won the game with 6 points overall. I did not play this time, instead I instructed both friends on how to play and helped them as they went through. It went well! they also used the paper manual I put together on how to play the game which was reassuring to know I had put enough relevant information on there to be able to play. I also added in 4 new furniture cards to implement the feedback I received last time.

Feedback -

At the end of the video I asked my friends what they thought of the game and what they thought I could improve on, the main point of improvement was how much advertising cost as my players did not have enough money to buy the action cards. This might also be a problem with more than 2 players, so that is what I will have to test in the future. We discussed two things to improve this:

1. Make the price of advertising cheaper

2. Allow one of the attributes to be revealed automatically at the start of the game

The first option relates to how the economy works within the game, and this might change depending on the amount of players present. If it doesn't work all that well with 4 players, it might mean I have to reduce the total players down to just 2 [I am predicting if it doesn't work well the fix to it would probably be making many more cards, so in terms of how long I have for this project it might be just more feasible reducing the players to 2]. Aside from this, both players said they enjoyed the game and thought it was easy enough to pick up, this feedback was very helpful in knowing what steps to take to improve. I also now know that having those extra 4 cards was a good shout, it played much better than the first time we played through it so I don't think I will need to make any changes to the amount of art needed. This gives me a final asset count of:

6 clients

6 employees

12 action cards

16 furniture cards

Trello -

https://trello.com/b/pypd9MbD/capstone

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/112wXJW27lFJjkPjQHZk7fCMT7VPCanDHE-cVP0tGDUM/edit

This adds to the problem solving section of  the project and has helped me figure out how to improve my game. Although I had planned to do this yesterday, I was able to catch up with my tasks and get it done today. I still feel quite confident about getting everything done for this project and I have plenty of time towards the end of this project in case I come across any more roadblocks. My goal is to get another client design and furniture design done by the end of this week.