From Prototype to Publication - The Bazaar Diaries Part 3: Preparing to Playtest
[Read our full Froggy Bazaar series here: www.pineislandgames.com/bazaar-diaries]
As I wrote about last week (in a regular blog post), as a game evolves through the development process the goals of your playtests, as well as the target playtest audience will change.
We’re now at the point for Froggy Bazaar where I need to broaden our play tester base (beyond my immediate circle), and so have a few important questions to answer.
What is the medium of playtesting?
Who is playtesting?
What are our goals for playtesting?
Playtesting Medium
We enlisted the help of Tabletop Simulator wizard Alexei Menardo to script our Froggy Bazaar mod. Alexei is great at getting TTS to do what you want including what could otherwise be fiddly set up [if you’d like to commission Alexei to build a mod for your game, you can reach him at pixelandboard@gmail.com].
As such, most of our playtesting in the near term will be online through Tabletop Simulator. That said, if you’d like to print out your own version of Froggy Bazaar, we have PNP materials here, and very rough written rules here.
Playtesters
Since we’ve been through this process a couple of times, I am fortunate to have an audience of Pine Island Insiders who are excited to play our upcoming games. Over time I’ll be reaching out on the various forums to source an even broader audience.
If you are looking for playtesters for your game, check out last week’s article Playtesting & Playtesters.
Playtesting Goals
These first rounds of playtesting are aimed at tightening up the game mechanically, finding pain points, and making sure every inch of the game is fun. Since this series focuses on a specific game, I’m going to go into a little more detail of my primary goals for this round of playtesting
Make sure that the BIG HOP action is balanced.
Figure out if we have the best end of game trigger (a player filling their rucksack).
Balancing group bugjectives & figuring out whether we should separate them into separate color and number bugjectives.
You can check out my full playtesting feedback form here. What I also love about these early rounds is that I run the playtesting, so can talk with players in real time about how they feel about different aspects of the gameplay.
While I think each playtest should have a focus, it’s always helpful to have some level of consistency in what you are asking your play testers. JT Smith over at The Game Crafter put together a pretty decent starting point for a playtesting form. You can download a free pdf or buy printed booklets of it here.
The Game Crafter Playtest Form
I prefer to come up with my own forms rather than use a template, as the specifics of the playtest and game will determine the kinds of questions that are relevant. But, JT’s form is definitely a good starting point for inspiration.
Do you want to playtest Froggy Bazaar?
For a guided playtest, fill out your availability in this form.
If you want to go it alone, you can download the TTS mod here, PNP materials here, and find rough WIP rules here.
If you do play the game on your own, please fill out our playtesting feedback form here.
