Detailed Design & testing

Play Testers Stage 1

 

Player 1:

Francisco Tatis

Age: 22

Male

 

Player 2:

Ryan Holick

Age: 18

Male

 

Test Stage 1 Results

The players seemed to have a lot of fun, despite a rocky start. I hadn’t put set-up rules in the rules I handed out to players so I had to intervene during set-up. The games took awhile because the board can go up to 4 players, and the size has to accommodate for that while still allowing less people to play. This meant it took awhile for players to move across the board to various destinations. Playing went relatively smooth, they had to stop on occasion to ask questions and re-check the rules, but that’s to be expected.

Test Stage 1 Reflection

1. “Why does it matter which race I pick, like, do the characters DO anything “This game is really long.” “I’m having trouble keeping track of all these cards, I just have a lot in my hand.” “I’m sorry but this board is weird, it’s huge but there’s hardly anywhere to move, that’s just dumb. There’s so much water here, like why?”

2. I was considering testing out what would happen if I gave each race some kind of special ability. Perhaps the fairy can move more, or the dragon starts out with a territory already. This is definitely something ill add to the next stage of testing when a new mechanic needs to be introduced. The game ran long because there were only 2 players, and the board was designed to go up to 4, so it needed to be on the big side. I don’t think a long game is necessarily a bad thing, if the players have the time. Games with more people will probably go much faster. The cards did kind of become a problem, there was no limit to them, and they aren’t small compact tiles like in scrabble. I have to figure out a good cap, so no one has too many cards, this may also encourage people to use them a bit more. The board could definitely use an upgrade, more land and less blue water.

3. The pieces had trouble being on the land, the land was so narrow that the pieces just had no room. I didn’t see the use of many wild cards; I am going to increase the amount of them in the deck. There were just so many regular letter cards the wild cards were hidden. I actually had no set up in the actual rules section, it was later and when I handed out the rules I realized it wasn’t included and that made set up confusing. Players kept losing/dropping cards, probably because there were too many in their hand at a time.

4. The green land of my board needs to increase while the blue needs to shrink. I did not have time to fix this issue before this round of testing, but plan to add more green in the next stage. I put 2 more of each kind of wild card in the neck for the next round to see how that number faired. I added the set-up to the rules to avoid confusion. I added a maximum hold amount to cards, and reduced the amount initially handed out.

5. They asked quite a few questions in the beginning, due to me forgetting the set-up, but it decreased as it went on. Including the beginning they ask 10 questions total.

 

Detailed Rules for Players

Set-up

Pick your character piece. Place it on any territory on the map. Have someone shuffle the alphabet deck, and hand out 5 face down cards to each player. The youngest player goes first.

Start turn

You may move your character piece up to three spaces on your turn. The spaces you move to must be touching or connected by a green line. As you move through unoccupied territory, place down a control token that corresponds with your character piece to conquer the territory. At the end of your turn, you draw 1 card for each territory you occupy (this should be equal to the amount of control tokens you have down). You may only hold up to 10 cards. If you come to a territory occupied by another player, you cannot enter that space until you defeat the player in battle.

You may use wild cards at any point during your turn, either to help yourself or to handicap and opponent.

Battle

If you choose to attack another player on your turn, you must make a word with cards in your hand to create a magic word to attack with. The defending player must then make a magic word to defend themselves with. The values of each letter is added up to check the power of each players’ magic word. If the attack player’s power is stronger, they now occupy the territory. If the defending player’s power was stronger, they keep the territory, and steal the power difference in cards from the attacking player (for example if the attacking player’s power was 5 and the defending player’s power was 7, [7-5=2] so the defending player takes 2 cards from the attacker). In case of a tie, the defending player keeps their territory, but takes no cards from the attacker. If the defender is unable to make a word, then they lose the territory automatically. If the defending player has the keep territory wild card, then they suffer no loss of territory. Both players must discard used cards.

Game over

A player is taken out of the game if:

They can’t draw any cards for 3 turns (they’ve lost all territory, and are unable to obtain anymore).

They can’t draw any cards and run out of cards.

When attacking, they lose all their cards regardless of if they own any territories.

 

Play Testers Stage 2

 

Player 1:

Francisco Tatis

Age: 22

Male

 

Player 2:

Alegna Adam

Age: 21

Female

 

Player 3:

Ryan Holick

Age: 18

Male

 

Test Stage 2 Results

The players that had played the last time had a definite advantage over the new player. The new player still had fun and was able to hold their own, they weren’t immediately taken out of play, as being a good strategizer overall helps. There’s advantage to having experience for sure, but it doesn’t seem to make the game unplayable by any means

Test Stage 2 Reflection

1. “Look, this board is still really awful.” “The font on these cards is pretty, I can read it so that’s nice. I mean the letter is in the corner incase I couldn’t.” “These two are cheating right? They’re good, they’re kicking my butt.” “Well, now I kinda miss all those cards.”

2. Yes, I definitely need to fix the board as soon as possible. I’m glad that the font I chose is nice, I tried to pick a pleasant one that was still legible. I also put the letter in a normal font in the top right corner so they could look at that if they got confused. It can be a little hard for a new player to jump in and play with people more experienced, but I believe this to be true of most strategy games. There’s little luck involved so knowing the rules is how you play well. I think the amount of cards was good; it would be hard going from unlimited to 10. The players didn’t drop them and they tried using them more.

3. The cap on the cards had players stuck with cards they didn’t necessarily want, and had a hard time attacking at some points. I will add a rule for discarding cards in their hands.

4. They knew how to set-up because I actually included that set of rules this time, so that worked exactly as I hoped. They didn’t have to deal with an entire slue of cards, it made the more manageable it seemed.

5. Players asked 5 questions this time. We had a new player so she had to ask a couple of questions; they could almost all be answered by the other, veteran players. She was a bit confused about combat the first few times. When she went to attack she stopped to ask what territories she could attack, and how she would know if she would win. She then had questions when she was being attacked.

 

Detailed Design & testing

 

New Mechanic

The mechanic that I added was that each of the different character pieces has it’s own ability; this was inspired by a comment in the last playtest. The wizard can draw the top card from the discard for one of their cards each turn, the fairy has an extra movement per turn, the dragon starts with an extra territory already, and the elf can look through the draw pile for one card each turn.

 

Play Testers Stage 3

 

Player 1:

Francisco Tatis

Age: 22

Male

In-person

 

Player 2:

Ryan Holick

Age: 18

Male

In-person

 

Test Stage 3 Results