Playtest time!

Playtest is essential

Inside Glyptodon Game Studio we divided the game development in six steps:

• New project – the game is still a prototype and we are working to set the core mechanics, game flow, and potential visual identity
• In development – the game is in play-test; this phase is essential to establish game rules, find mathematical balance and evaluate possible game modes.
• Art & Design – game rules are now consolidated and it’s time to establish the visual identity of the product; in this phase, play-tests aim at improving user experience.
• File preparation – rule book is revised by the last time, blind tests and final adjustments are made on the files to print.
• In production – all files are sent to the factory and after evaluation of the printed proofs, the production of the game begins.
• Finished – the game is finally ready for sale and distribution by us or our partners in other countries.

In most of these steps playtest is fundamental to improve the gameplay.

Playtests provide a lot of data to the designers, and we can divide them into 4 types.

How fun is this game?

Sometimes we receive a new project with a great idea: interesting mechanics, brilliant themes and innovative arrangement of components. Nevertheless it is necessary to answer an essential question for all games: how fun is this game?

During this step, playtests are focused on evaluating the response of the testers. In general, we spend 1h or 2h talking about the experience of the game and/or reading reports written by the testers.

Vague impressions like “It’s fun” or “I didn’t like” are the worst thing to a game designer. The best comments must be specific, honest and straight to the point.  

Statistics and balance

During the development the biggest challenge is to ensure the balance between all the available strategies in the game.

Playtests to find the best mathematical balance are quantitative: the main idea is to collect a great amount of data to create a spreadsheet of information to evaluate the math behind the game.

The impressions and feelings of testers are still important, but the numbers are more important than emotions during balance playtets.

Usability tests

Comercial board games need to be gorgeous, but beauty doesn’t matter if the players can’t understand the game.

User Experience is essential to provide a great gameplay and we need to evaluate the colors, iconography and design of the game.

Playtests to check the quality of the user experience are qualitative: the main idea is to collect the impressions and feelings of the players about how easy and intuitive the design is.

Blind tests

The last type of playtest is the blind test.

The testers selected never played the game during the previous steps. We provide the rulebook to them and ask the participants to play the game without external advice.

If the testers ignore an important rule, play in a wrong way or didn’t understand any part of the text we have an important alert. Maybe the writer of the rulebook needs to clarify the original material, rewrite in another way or think of a new approach to present the rules.  

Playtest is the way

Developing a game can be exhausting: Leandro Pires, designer of Paper Dungeons, played the game over 400 times during the development. Many times the feedback was negative, but Leandro understood these reactions as an opportunity to improve the game and reach a more fun experience for players.

The commercial success of Paper Dungeons is a mix of inspiration, talent and hard work. And most of the hard work is to playtest the game all the time.