It’s been a year and I finally got to at least reading a bit of the manual and doing the setup.
I have some feedback just from doing that (haven’t even started playing yet!). This is from reading the BlackBoxSpreads.pdf. Let me know if I should continue giving this kind of feedback and if it’s useful to you at all? Take what you find useful and discard the rest.
General
- It would be good if you could add average play time somewhere on your page and/or in the manual. Or min/max as in 30 - 60 mins play time (this is just a made up number, I have no idea since I haven’t properly played).
- Including images in the manual would help me to visualize the game flow e.g. flowchart, diagram of a typical game ‘Network spread’, ‘Hand’, ‘Discard’ (like what you see in an IKEA manual).
- (related to the previous point) I still haven’t read everything, but I feel a high-level overview would save me time. There does not appear to be a high-level overview. I get the feeling I’m going to have to read everything once first before I start.
- The pdf bookmarks are very helpful to jump around. However if someone was to print the manual out, there are no page numbers on the bottom of the pages.
- I just realized it’s probably not very ink-friendly either as a printout.
- In the section ‘You need:’ you said “Set of hobby dice”. This can be improved if you tell me exactly what dice I need.
Formatting, Wording etc.
- In the section ‘Discovering your target’ I assume you wanted to say ‘Create your own’, not ‘Create your one’.
- In the section ‘Reconnaissance (Set Up)’. Perhaps this should be Setup which is the noun?
- Easier to read and skim over if you turned this into a step by step list?
- Section ‘Game modes’ > ‘Single Game’. ‘For more or less difficulty’ sounds better to me as ‘For higher or lower difficulty’ or ‘For harder or easier difficulty’.
- Section ‘Network Assets’. I recommend changing to ‘Network Assets (Clubs and Spades)’ to the title so it’s clearer. This will be more consistent with the previous headings like ‘Usernames (Hearts)’.
Duplicate pdf bookmarks
These show up twice in my pdf viewer:
- ‘Not Every Hack Will Be a Success’
- ‘GM Mode / Using in Another Game’
- ‘Network Assets’