Expo Boogie

So, I'm back from my first multi-day trip to UK Games Expo and, apart from playing a heap of games, mostly new to me, buying a few, and having some great chats with friends old and new, I managed to attend the playtest session run by Playtest UK, and had a 90 minute slot for running games of Boogie Knights, after which I stayed on to try out someone else's game.

Actual people, actually playing my actual game.

I'll just mention this other game... It was a resource management/conversion game with some very nice features, designed by Dave Mortimer.  This game is totally my sort of thing and had me fully engaged all the way through, to the point that I wasn't paying any attention at all to the fabulous looking prototype with dinosaurs and cowboy minis on the next table.  I'm really looking forward to seeing how Dave's game develops.

Anyway, on with the playtest report.  I had two volunteers, a couple (I think), very quickly and we played a three-player game before being joined by another lady to make it four for another game -- and, yes, the original players were (or at least seemed) keen to play again.  After that play through, these folk were replaced by another couple for another three-player run.  The game was quick to explain and took about 20 minutes each time.

It was also interesting to note that in every game we needed to reshuffle the deck only twice, and I think this means that the deck is probably just about big enough to support a four-player game -- I would really like to have the game comfortably playable with 54 cards as this number works really well with most "print on demand" services, and only required six pages to print out for print 'n' play purposes.

In the evening, I joined a couple of guys (and some others who dropped in and out of the table) for assorted games, and they said that they had seen Boogie Knights in the playtest zone but weren't able to get to play.  Fortunately I had brought the cards with me, so we had another play then.

So, what did I learn?

Well, overall the concept of the game went down well and drew people to the game, and folk seemed to think that the mechanics of the game fit the theme pretty well.  My playtesters in the afternoon spent a lot of time laughing, and there was a little light table-talk about the reasons for swapping, say, a lance for a tambourine, and all this made for lively and fun play.  All of this was very gratifying and suggested I was working along the right lines.

I also showed some concept sketches to give an idea of how I imagine the final artwork could be, and these went down very well indeed.

I won't be winning the Turner Prize for this, but at least it gives an idea of the direction this game's presentation could take.

Of course, it might be excellent for the ego if all the comments were positive, but it wouldn't be very helpful for game development, and all the playtesters were very helpful with constructive criticism.  The evening session was especially useful in this respect, as we weren't limited by time like we were during the official playtest period and we were able to discuss some aspects of the game fairly thoroughly.

I'll sum up the major points...

• There were points in each of the games when players had little to do other than just switching equipment around.
• One suggestion was to increase the proportion of challenge cards.
• Sometimes players ended up without useful or interesting cards.
• There were a couple of requests to be able to discard cards.
• The challenges versus a target number seemed a bit hard.
• Could there be challenges of different difficulties?
• Some players wanted to be able to pick on or mess with other players more often.
• In the four-player game, you couldn't challenge the player opposite.
• Some thought that the randomness of the die rolls was a bit too swingy.
• Though one player said that for such a quick, light game, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if it was more random and chaotic.
• Sometimes the cards in the armoury languish there for a (long) while, so maybe there should be some way to clear them out.
• While, on discussion, everyone could understand the merit of having "neutral" equipment (which can cancel penalties, even if they don't add bonuses), it still seems like playing them makes for a bit of a "non-move".
• The iconography and graphical design needs a lot of cleaning up.
• But I knew that, and the playtesters all accepted that this was something that would come later.

So, I think I have a lot of food for thought and plenty of really valuable feedback to be going on with.  I will definitely be tweaking the number of challenge cards in the deck (and the difficulty of the target number challenges), and this will probably address a few problems if I get it right.  Less duplication in the deck would also improve things.  I am also pondering on having things like a wizard's robes, hat and wand as equipment, which would probably be neutral for combat or disco, but may have other effects, like clearing and re-supplying the armoury.  A feel a new version heading this way...

Many thanks to my fine and very helpful playtesters over the weekend: Tom, Paula, Lynn, Khia (I hope I got your name right), Craig, Liam and Paul.  You were all awesome.