The first of two playtesting sessions wrapped up today and I was left with way more information than I expected. I need to reword a number of cards, my partner needs official credit, and we might also be circling a fun theme: Rats!

The Playtest

Today’s playtest just included myself and my partner Jordan since we’re still so early in development. Luckily, we haven’t come across any major roadblocks that have required us to change things around.

In speaking with a user named Wordbug on the Riffle Shuffle and Roll discord, I got the idea to limit the “Warp” card. Previously, the card allowed the player to teleport their pawn to any available tile. It worked but, when Jordan encountered it for the first time, she almost immediately identified that limiting it could result in much more tactical plays. Instead, taking a page out of Wordbug’s book, we altered it so that it only allows you to teleport to any unoccupied surprise token. The hope is that players can still use it defensively while lowering the cognitive load but also use it offensively. I did just make a small caveat a few seconds ago that allows you to skip it if there are no available tokens. Hopefully that doesn’t haunt me in the future!

We did have two big-for-this-particular-playtest issues that still need to be fully ironed out. We had a few moments where well-placed teleports had a player end their turn on a heart card even though they stopped “moving” when they landed on the original surprise card. Should they still get a card from the deck even though the Warp sent them to the card or not? Ultimately, we established that you absolutely should be able to receive those cards. I just altered the text to say that you receive a card as long as you “end your turn on a Heart card.”

Outside of these changes, most of the immediate changes were pretty minor. Explicitly not allowing players to occupy the same tile at the same time, clarifying that players can pass through each other but not land on them, and trying and immediately backing away from a change to the Rotate card: Things were moving alright!

We actually played way more games than I expected and it was moving shockingly smoothly. Jordan has been crushing me too, literally beating me at my own game. I’m impressed! (She still can’t seem to beat me at most other board games. I need to regain my honor somehow and putting her on blast in a niche design blog is the best I’ve got, okay?)

What next? 

Once we had played around five games, we were feeling pretty happy with it and I had enough to work on. We did notice that it’s pretty easy to forget exactly what card you started on after you’ve begun moving. Quite frankly, I’m not sure how to address that yet but it’s not super important so I’m leaving it for now. We also briefly discussed how to list Jordan’s involvement in the project but I think we’ll also need to address that later. More importantly, we have to get to the game’s theme!

Rat Bandits

Rats! No, I don’t mean that something bad happened in a very 1960’s way. That’s the current theme idea. 

We identified that, in one word, the game made you feel “mischievous.” Maybe it’s because I watched too many cartoons as a kid, maybe it’s because my year-long Mausritter campaign rewired my brain to see rodents everywhere, but the most mischievous thing I could think of was a rat. The concept of cartoon rats navigating a maze just sounded super silly and, more importantly, my kind of silly. Once we started talking about rats, Jordan lit up and started spitballing ideas for ways to repurpose the existing cards to be more ratlike. The next hour included us working on card text on my PC while she began learning how to use Krita for the first time. Also, our first concept art!

This is a very early and very rough draft of a potential replacement for the “Steal” card. I’m way more pleased with it than Jordan is, even though Jordan is absolutely going to be the go-to artist for a while.

Moving forward, we’ll be hashing out the theme more and I’ve got another playtest coming up later this week. I’ll see what happens and if there’s a new development, I’ll let you know!

~ Ezekiel