Brand Game Development

MARCH 9, 2020

There is some bitter truth behind the joking that Monopoly makes families fight. Watch your playtesters’ reactions. With so many issues, it seems unlikely that Monopoly was thoroughly playtested. At the very least, it wasn’t playtested to modern standards. That’s not how family games are meant to go!

Game Design 130

Game Design Game Designer Playtesting Games 130

Radiator Blog

SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

I also tried to tackle another design weakness of mine -- I rely a lot on fights with shotguns. Combined with dynamic map geometry, my personal playtests felt slightly less painful, and making the last 5% of this map felt a bit fresher than my previous maps. The water is now boring and blue.

Playtesting 52

Playtesting Fighting Scripting Puzzle 52

PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Then someone told me about a game developer in our community who had developed a fighting game based on their comic. During the playtest, six people played at the same time, and I noticed they laughed at certain texts, which was great. Adeline shared, “My highlight was when Yasemin offered to play test my game in her company.

Game Developer 143

Game Developer Game Development Development Games 143

Keith Burgun

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

But, as I talked about above, it’s a new KIND of deckbuilder, in a bunch of ways: Eight asymmetric, fighting game style characters with their own abilities, strengths and weaknesses. It’s a deckbuilder! We currently have a very nice Tabletop Simulator module with the rulebook and everything.

Playtesting 52

Playtesting Writing Graphics Fighting 52

Keith Burgun

APRIL 14, 2024

I had a playtest with a friend of mine one day, and he noted that we have a lot of resources and they are all kind of “similar” We had gold, mana, health, storm shards, and blast tokens, and they all kind of felt the same in how they moved throughout the game. +1 Anyway, onto the breakthrough. Huge upset! The crowd goes wild!

Concepts 69

Concepts Playtesting Game Design Game Designer 69

Brand Game Development

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

If you hate the game you’re playtesting, do something different. Tasty Humans is about monsters fighting humans instead of the other way around, which gets a sick laugh out of everybody who sees the game. Don’t just playtest it and refine the mechanics. This seems obvious, but never lose sight of it.

Game Design 130

Game Design Game Designer Tile Games 130

Radiator Blog

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

It should feel surprising and overwhelming to fight so many so early in the map. When the player backtracks to find the key they may have missed, they will fight these ogres, and hopefully notice the silver key at that point. This time I throw a dozen dogs at the player at the beginning. I think I'm fine with this.

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Texture Fighting Lightmap Render 52

Brand Game Development

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

Playtest a Ton. Think long and hard about how much you want the game to fight back against the players. With all this said, how does one create rules that fulfill the twin purposes of balancing the game and communicating clearly? I have some guidelines. This is non-exhaustive and it just includes what’s on my mind this week.

Balance 130

Balance Games Communications Mechanics 130

Sirlin

OCTOBER 20, 2015

Finally, we discuss what Geiger's moves will be in the Fantasy Strike fighting game. Within a couple days, I plan to post a big update to the Codex print-and-play version (for $25+ patrons) that has dozens of balance changes based on the last month of playtesting.

Fantasy 52

Fantasy Fighting Balance Concepts 52

Sirlin

JUNE 13, 2015

I want to show you some of what I'm working (Codex, Flowchart, and a Fighting game) and tell you about Patreon. Patrons helped playtest and also just point out errors or give suggestions how to improve things. Codex, Flowchart, and now.the Fantasy Strike fighting game (yes, really!). Instead.it's fun.

Fighting 52

Fighting Fantasy Art Build 52

Ask a Game Dev

MAY 26, 2023

We can then break down the components for the activities… traveling, interacting/talking with NPCs, fighting, etc. We can then try these values to start with for our playtests and see how they feel. We have to make sure that we tune the LPH of the various activities in aggregate to match the target LPH for the full game.

Build 52

Build Playtesting Dev Fighting 52

Brand Game Development

JUNE 11, 2018

You fight to take the throne either through military conquest or economic prowess. There might be a room for playtesting prototypes at some cons, but they are often small and not very well attended. I’m currently working on releasing my first game, State of Wonder , as well three other projects on the side.

Prototyping 130

Prototyping Games Localization Demo 130

Rindoku

OCTOBER 7, 2016

Everything would work out as designed if the player started fighting in the new area but of course players will surprise you. Fix the problems we identified during the playtest. I’m pretty sure we’ll be doing some more playtests in the near future. This dapper fellow thinks there’s too much clicking. How many levels?

Point and Click 52

Point and Click Dev Demo Playtesting 52

Interesting Choices

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

I've created an online prototype for playtesting that has seen almost 2000 games completed with at least a dozen players clocking in at over 100 games apiece. The rapid feedback and iteration cycles enabled by this level of playtesting mean that the game is currently in fantastic shape. victory points in the final era.

Build 40

Build Tile Point and Click Games 40

Grid Sage Games

MARCH 10, 2022

So I reimagined them yet again, taking into account their unique targeting mechanics and what that means when fighting other bots. As is the changes are too new and we’ll have to see what real playtesting turns up. The biggest change there was simply yet more significant damage buffs. Fine tuning.

Balance 52

Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

For the first version of the game, we decided to have only a single-player version, where the players would fight against the AI. Not to mention that the playtests on Playtestcloud usually lasted for more than the required 30 minutes. It was supposed to be a game with a synchronous multiplayer mode.

Data 52

Data Build Games Mobile 52

Grid Sage Games

OCTOBER 2, 2022

The main drawback is clearly the massive heat generation, which had me running multiple cooling systems and/or injectors, and still sometimes backing off from larger fights to cool down. Five projectiles, all with respectable damage and 9% blast crit?!

Engine 52

Engine Engineering Mechanics Balance 52

Grid Sage Games

JULY 17, 2022

In playtesting so far this (among other benefits we’ll get to later) is already clearly tempting players who would otherwise always prefer regular branches over infiltrating a Garrison. Failing that (gets blasted in a fight? hacking attempts unsuccessful?),

Beta 52

Beta Content Balance Mechanics 52