By Rose Basom
Time flies when you’re organizing and running the first round of playtests on a new board game! We just wrapped up initial playtesting on EvoHom here at STEMsapien Games and I am excited to share our process and lessons learned from doing this the first time.
Lesson 1: Give yourself plenty of time to create a digital prototype of your game before launch.
One of the most difficult parts of this process was getting the prototype ready to go! We opted to use Tabletopia because it is free for players to use, and does a nice job of simulating physical gameplay. I highly recommend that anyone creating a prototype on Tabletopia have every component organized and ready to upload based on how components are created in the “Workshop” area. For example, you can batch create a deck of cards by uploading all the different fronts and the back of the cards at the same time, so it’s best to organize your components by each type that includes all art for that particular component. The upload process takes MUCH longer than you would think, so plan accordingly.
We then spent about a week advertising the first round of playtesting on social media, including Twitter and Instagram. All in all, we ended up with almost 30 playtesters signed up and excited to try the early prototype of EvoHom. Once all the schedules were organized and e-mails sent out with specific dates and times, we were ready to playtest!
Lesson 2: Schedule the maximum number of players for each session (not including yourself!).
Fortunately, enough people signed up with schedules that aligned where I was able to coordinate playtesting groups that had the maximum number of players for EvoHom (4… for now!). I sure am glad I did this, because even with reminders, people did not show up for the virtual playtesting. It was okay for the most part, because as long as 2 people showed up, I could play along and we could run the game as a 3 player game. Unfortunately, we did have to cancel more playtests than we would have expected due to low turnout, but now we know to emphasize time zones in the sign up forms even more than we did initially!
Lesson 3: Don’t let the fear of how your game will be received hold you back!
I actually met many people through playtesting EvoHom who were also working on their own board games, and I actually heard the same thing from multiple people: “I’m working on my own board game, but I’m worried about how it will play/be received”. This is probably a common fear, and I know I felt the same way, especially since we didn’t have all of our original art completed! But once the first playtest happened and I got a feel for what to expect, the whole experience ended up being really positive, informative, and supportive. Playtesting is empowering, as long as you’re receptive to feedback and are open to making changes to your prototype! Which leads me into my next lesson…
Lesson 4: Make sure you have a feedback form for people to fill out.
I have been a playtester for some other games, and noticed that many of the playtests involved a brief (sometimes longer) discussion about suggestions, how we felt, etc. I never had to fill out a form, but I decided to make one for playtesting of EvoHom just so I could keep things standard and give people a chance to think about their experience and add commentary they may not have thought of during the playtest. I also kept it anonymous so people felt more comfortable in giving critical feedback. This has worked out really well, as the questions are standard for everyone, and nicely digitized for easy access!
Lesson 5: Make changes, keep backlogs.
The feedback from playtesting EvoHom was incredible and invaluable; as a new game designer, I want to do my best to make edits to the game and optimize gameplay into a seamless experience for players! Originally, I was going to wait to make some changes to EvoHom after all the playtesting was complete and wait for the second round to test a newer version. However, I ended up making some edits early on in the first round of playtesting and was glad I did, because it gave me real time feedback on how the new version played, without having to wait for the next round. I made sure to save the older versions of the game in case any edits did not work out.
Overall, I was proud of how the first playtests of EvoHom went, and am excited to share a new and improved version of EvoHom for a second round of playtesting later this month. All of us at STEMsapien Games would like to give a huge thank you again to all of our playtesters who tried out EvoHom and gave feedback, we couldn’t do this without your help and support!