Gametesting

Today marked the first official playtest by a third party of the newly titled 'Battle for Eden'. We decided a more dramatic name than just 'Species' was needed, as it was a bit more indicative of the type of game we'd be producing. Last week, we underwent some basic gametesting within our group just to iron out the last of the glitches in the gameplay.

As you can see, our board was still in the beta phase. We hadn't really done too much work on the design end of things; our resource cards were represented by random playing cards, we had no real resource hexagons on the board, and we had to use random lego pieces as our drones.


Today, we unveiled the final test board. This one represents what the actual completed board will look like after the coming weekend. Pictured is the board with some of the template resource cards, as well as an example of the collectable power-ups and drones in use.

It was a fitting time to unveil, because (as Basil mentioned in a previous post), today was the first time that people from outside our course got to play the game. Things began smoothly enough, following some initial confusion regarding the rules, the guys settled into play.

The players picked up the game fairly quickly, and soon they were playing at the same level as we who had been working on it since the initial idea was laid out. By the end of the test, they really didn't want to stop playing, as each participant had become properly invested in becoming the first ever victorious player. 


We took this as a great sign; if people can come to the table for the first time and grow to really enjoy and understand the game on their first playthrough, we must be doing SOMETHING right!